Ellen Whinnett: How Barnaby Joyce came out swinging
Barnaby Joyce is a wrecking ball the Coalition doesn’t need at the moment but that’s unlikely to stop the former Nationals leaders creating more mayhem, writes Ellen Whinnett.
Opinion
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The public once had a lot of affection for Barnaby Joyce. Elected first as a Nationals Senator for Queensland in 2004, he became a maverick, building his media profile and developing a strong personal profile. His eccentricities were amusing and relatable — he’d go for a run around parliament, then duck into the courtyard for a cigarette, still in his runners and shorts.
Married with four beautiful daughters, he presented as a good success story and after moving to the House of Representatives, became the Nationals leader when Warren Truss retired. That meant he spent two years as Australia’s deputy prime minister.
Now, Joyce has become a giant, unhinged wrecking ball, smashing his way through the Coalition benches and creating a very serious problem for Prime Minister Scott Morrison. This week’s ambush, where five government MPs voted for Joyce ally Llew O’Brien as deputy speaker of the House, against the wishes of Nationals leader Michael McCormack, was the clearest example yet that Joyce, once Australia’s second-most powerful politician, has become little more than a metaphorical suicide bomber.
There is no obvious strategy to his campaign of destruction. A week before, he had tried unsuccessfully to roll McCormack, with O’Brien helping by bringing on a spill. It failed. O’Brien then quit the party room, although argued he is still a member of the government. Morrison, who could see McCormack was unable to resolve the internal dispute, spoke to O’Brien and the pair agreed he would continue to support the government and sit in the joint party room. After all, a vote is a vote, particularly when you’re on a majority of only two seats.
Using the deputy speaker vote as a guide, we can guess Joyce had the following Lower House votes in the leadership spill: Joyce, O’Brien, David Gillespie, Ken O’Dowd and the “member for Manila’’ George Christensen. He’s now lost one of those votes in the party room following O’Brien’s resignation, meaning McCormack’s position, while precarious, has strengthened by one.
Joyce proudly states on his website that he crossed the floor 28 times as a senator and he and his band of rebels have made it clear they might do it again in the House of Reps if they don’t like the government’s agenda, particularly on climate change mitigation.
Although Christensen hurriedly sent a text message to Morrison denying he was part of the bloc when the rebels leaked a story about it, there’s no doubt they do have the numbers to block the Coalition’s legislative agenda, if they worked in concert with Labor.
O’Brien claimed he didn’t know Labor was going to nominate him as deputy speaker. To believe that, you also have to believe Labor, the entire crossbench and five government MPs agreed spontaneously to support his nomination. You also have to believe in unicorns, the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.
Despite all this, most of the Nats party room seems to have some genuine affection for O’Brien, an ex-cop who became the member for Wide Bay.
That affection does not extend so broadly to Joyce.
Sitting in front of him in the House of Representatives when the ambush vote went down was his colleague and close friend Damian Drum, the Victorian MP and ex-AFL coach who had been chosen as the Nationals endorsed candidate for the spot of deputy speaker.
Drum was a mate of Joyce’s and had supported him through the series of scandals that cost him his job in February 2018, including the “Barnababy’’ affair with a young staffer who became pregnant to him (she is now his partner and they have two sons).
Through hours of country and regional radio, Drum had defended Joyce publicly and supported him privately too as Joyce’s marriage disintegrated and the affair became a major national scandal.
The straight-talking Drum was absolutely blindsided by the ambush and his emotions now seem to sit somewhere between heartbreak and fury.
Matt Canavan, the Joyce ally in the Senate, is a clever and effective MP but quit the frontbench to support Joyce’s failed bid and now languishes on the backbench.
What was the point of all this?
The argument is that McCormack lacks drive and the party doesn’t stand up enough to threats from One Nation and other conservative parties or the Liberals.
That’s mostly a cover story for Joyce’s thwarted leadership ambitions.
It’s true that McCormack lacks the charisma of John Anderson, or the entertainment value of Joyce. But he is solid, disciplined, hardworking and gets on well with Morrison.
Joyce doesn’t accept those qualities and has openly declared his interest in leading the party again.
“I don’t think (Joyce) has got any idea how much women hate him,’’ one Queensland MP said, fascinated by the drama.
The Liberals are quietly despairing. After the snafus of the summer — the Hawaiian holiday, the dreadful party-political ad spruiking the Australian Defence Force call-up — Morrison needed clear air and a chance to move on. The government is dealing with serious problems with the coronavirus, the bushfires and the floods.
But early 2020, like early 2018, is once again being overshadowed by Joyce-inspired mayhem. And there’s no likelihood it will end soon.
Ellen Whinnett is national politics editor.