Joe Hildebrand: Barnaby Joyce quits Nationals to face his biggest problem – he is no longer unique
Barnaby Joyce faces an uncertain political future after quitting the Nationals, with his trademark maverick appeal now lost in a crowded field of rebels and populists, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Years ago, Barnaby Joyce told me a story – no, not the one about the Moree wedding – but a political fable about a young National Party protege who asked how he could be just like him.
You can’t, the maverick senator said. The whole point of being Barnaby is that there is nobody else like him. And this is the problem that Joyce now faces as he leaves the Nationals: There are too many people like him.
Indeed, in 21st-century politics, mavericks are now mainstream. And so how do you be a rebel when rebellion is the new normal?
Joyce’s great strength in his early ascendancy was he was an outsider on the inside, the voice of the ordinary man in the establishment.
When he was accidentally elected in the Coalition’s Senate landslide of 2004, he crossed the floor no fewer than 19 times in fewer than three years. But, in the first of many ironies, this worked so well he became the victim of his own success.
Barnaby was so popular, he ended up becoming the Nationals’ leader in the Senate and then party leader overall, and Australia’s deputy prime minister. Thus it was the Joyce National Party alongside the Morrison Liberal Party that enshrined Australia’s commitment to net zero in 2021 – the very position he quit the Nationals over, despite them having already abandoned it.
If this sounds confusing, it’s because it is. The only way Barnaby could remain a rebel was to rebel against himself. And what he does next cannot help but result in more confusion and chaos, not just for him but for the Nationals and the Coalition as a whole.
Barnaby has always been a one-man band. That is, as he himself knows, the very essence of his political power.
So does he join One Nation to become the 2IC to Pauline Hanson?
History tells us this never ends well. Just ask Mark Latham.
Or perhaps ask James Ashby, the head of Hanson’s praetorian guard and the current heir apparent. History also shows that heirs do not take kindly to new rivals.
And Barnaby is no doubt also asking himself. Despite all the bluster about net zero, it is clear the main reason for his defection is his feelings of neglect and disrespect from the leadership of the party he once led.
How long will he be happy to be dictated to by another leader in another party? You could almost set your watch to it. And if Barnaby just goes full Barnaby and runs as an independent, what then? His best chance would be as the member for New England, where you could doorknock for days and not find anyone who didn’t vote for him.
But then he would just be another MP on an impotent crossbench staring at a sea of Labor faces. Or he could run for the Senate, which would be no sure thing but still possible given his vast appeal.
There he would be just one more maverick among many, including the existing four One Nation crew, Jacqui Lambie and Ralph Babet smiling serenely like a Pentecostal Buddha. Barnaby, of course, knows this, and this week articulated the problem publicly in his own inimitable style, which few of our educated elites are able to translate, but which ordinary punters understand instinctively.
In a nutshell, he said politics had changed and he needed to find his place within it. It was clear he was still struggling to identify exactly where, or if, that place exists.
If it is just in the anti-net zero brigade, he will find himself just one voice in a crowded chorus. So, too, in anti-immigration or any other populist touchstone.
That doesn’t make him wrong, it just makes him one of many. And the whole point of Barnaby is he is not one of many, he is the everyday voice of the people in an elitist cabal.
The problem is that the people, at least the vast majority of them, are not with Barnaby or any of his would-be suitors.
The populist politics of the US and UK, where voting is voluntary and energising the base is critical to success, do not apply to Australia, where even the most apolitical citizen is obliged to cast their vote.
This is not to cast moral judgment. It is merely a fact all the efforts of both Coalition parties to desperately placate their right-wing bases are mathematically futile.
Elections in Australia are won and lost in the centre. All the rest is just shouting from the sidelines.
And Joyce may find, after abandoning the party that brought him to the centre of power, he ends up simply shouting himself hoarse.
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Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Barnaby Joyce quits Nationals to face his biggest problem – he is no longer unique
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