The recent divisions within the Federal Coalition were not just embarrassing for both Malcolm Turnbull and Warren Truss, but also exposed the Opposition's current core problem: it does not know what it wants to stand for.
To understand the dilemma, let's first revisit what happened in the Senate on Thursday night.
Labor had presented legislation to pay for its infrastructure program, which would have entailed dismantling the $2 billion regional telecommunications fund established by The Nationals as the price for their support of the sell off of Telstra during the last term of the Howard Government.
At first instance the Coalition, independent and minor parties in the Senate amended the legislation to keep the fund in place, and thus it was sent back to the House of Representatives where both the Liberal and Nationals spoke in favour of the amendments.
Labor, however, used its numbers to reject the Senate's amendments and sent the original legislation back to the Senate for approval once again.
It is here that things become both grey and interesting.
Somewhere in the hour between being presented in the Lower House and the Upper House, the Coalition's front bench decided it was "not going to die in a ditch" over the issue and be seen to be holding up Labor's recession-busting spending plan.
The problem was that most of the Coalition partyroom did not support the position and their Senators acted accordingly.
The four Nationals, led by Joyce, were joined by two Liberals in crossing the floor to defend the regional telecommunications infrastructure fund. A further 30-odd Liberal Senators abstained rather than vote in line with the instructions from Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull.
For Joyce it was a matter of principle to defend to the hilt the policy which the Nationals had fought for while in Government.
He maintains there was advice from the Senate that the amendments would not have jeopardised the legislation and the bulk of Labor's spending plan could have gone ahead unimpeded, while also protecting the interests of the Nationals constituents.
Going on the comments posted by readers of this website, the Nationals Senators pulled the right rein.
So why are they being accused via the media of treachery by senior - and as yet unnamed - Liberals?
Given the number of Liberal Senators who abstained from the vote, and that two of their number crossed the floor in support of the Nationals, it would seem that these senior Liberals are out of touch with the partyroom.
It makes no sense for these "senior Liberals" to threaten ditching the Coalition agreement over this stoush when so many of their number were in support of the Nationals.
The fact is the leadership is more concerned with the appearance of party unity and in truth the split has delivered days of damaging media to the Coalition.
But the Coalition leadership must look beyond that and examine the tactics that led to the split in the first place, namely its refusal to put up a fight for what it stood for less than 12 months ago.
The Liberal leadership under Turnbull appears desperate to shed the stigma of the Howard years, avoiding a fight on any policies of the former government that Labor is now overturning. This includes traditional tenets of the Liberal faith like a deregulated workplace relations system.
Enough politicians have learnt the hard way the dangers of running a "small target" strategy. Politics is ultimately about making an argument and Turnbull and the Coalition must decide what they want to make an argument about if they are to win back voter support.
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