One must almost admire the Australians. Situated on a tectonic plate of isolation and sun-drenched myopia, their political class has managed to refine the art of the circular firing squad into something bordering on the avant-garde. The latest dispatch from the colonial fringe involves Sussan Ley, the Liberal Party’s deputy leader, who is currently performing a rhetorical tightrope walk over a vat of acid while insisting the breeze is quite refreshing. The Liberal-National Coalition, that fragile marriage of urbanites who enjoy overpriced espresso and ruralists who think climate change is a conspiracy by the metric system, has finally reached its inevitable, messy divorce. And yet, in the grand tradition of bureaucratic absurdity, the protagonists are pretending it is merely a minor disagreement over the curtains.

Sussan Ley has declared that her leadership can survive this split, a statement of such profound, unearned confidence that it borders on the theological. It is the classic maneuver of the modern politician: when the ship has snapped in half and the stern is vertical in the water, one must point at the remaining paintwork and commend its durability. The Liberal MP who noted that Australians are ‘pretty unhappy’ with the opposition has performed the year’s most heroic feat of understatement. It is akin to suggesting that the residents of Pompeii were a bit miffed about the soot. The Australian public, one suspects, views this implosion with the same weary detachment I reserve for a broken espresso machine—vaguely annoyed by the lack of service, but entirely unsurprised by the mechanical failure.

Then we have Senator Anne Ruston, the designated mourner for the day, lamenting the breach of a ‘fundamental rule’—shadow cabinet solidarity. How charmingly quaint. To speak of ‘solidarity’ in a coalition that has the internal cohesion of a wet paper bag is a delightful exercise in irony. The Nationals, those perennial agents of agrarian chaos, have apparently broken the sacred vow by resigning en masse or, more accurately, being ‘accepted’ into resignation. Ley, we are told, was left with ‘no option’ but to let them go. It is the language of a headmistress dealing with delinquent toddlers who have finally set fire to the gymnasium. The ‘fundamental rule’ was not just broken; it was ground into the red dust of the outback and forgotten.

Ruston’s assertion that the party still ‘believes’ in the Coalition is perhaps the most tragicomic element of this entire theater. Belief is for cathedrals and fairy tales; in politics, it is merely a placeholder for a lack of a better plan. They want the Coalition to continue because, without it, they are merely two disparate groups of people shouting at clouds from different sides of the fence. The farce of the ‘shadow cabinet’ is itself a masterpiece of bureaucratic theater—a group of people pretending to have portfolios they don’t possess, in a government they don’t run, bound by rules they don’t follow. It is a simulacrum of power, a shadow play where the actors have begun to stab one another with cardboard daggers.

The Nationals’ decision to go public with their dissent is described by the Liberals as a ‘deliberation’ they won’t comment on. In European terms, this is the equivalent of your spouse burning the house down and you telling the neighbors you aren’t going to comment on their architectural choices. The sheer cowardice of the bureaucratic response is what I find most delicious. Instead of admitting that the ideological rift between the two parties is now an unbridgeable chasm, they retreat into the safety of process. They talk of ‘responses to the needs of the Australian public,’ as if the public’s primary need is to watch a group of middle-aged professionals engage in a slow-motion car crash.

What we are witnessing is the terminal stage of a political consensus that has outlived its utility. The Coalition was always a cynical arrangement, a way to keep the ‘wrong people’ out of power by pretending that the interests of a Sydney banker and a Queensland cattle farmer are identical. Now that the veneer has peeled away, all that remains is the desperate scrambling of leaders like Ley to maintain the illusion of control. She says she can survive. Of course she can. In the world of the career politician, survival is not measured by effectiveness or popularity, but by the ability to remain in the room after everyone else has been asked to leave. It is a hollow victory, a reign over a kingdom of ghosts. Australians are indeed ‘pretty unhappy,’ but they should take comfort in the fact that their leaders are providing such a stellar example of how to fail with absolute, unblinking arrogance. It is, if nothing else, a consistent performance.