Don’t let new Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce fool you, he’s no dope

THIS is how someone Johnny Depp called the “sweaty, big gutted man from Australia” has became the second most powerful person in the country.

New Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is no dope. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

DON’T let Barnaby Joyce fool you. He might have convinced many he is a clumsy backwoods chump but he most certainly isn’t.

Mr Joyce, the new Nationals leader who will be acting Prime Minister on occasion, is best known overseas as the man who threatened to kill Johnny Depp’s dogs.

He’s the “sweaty, big gutted man from Australia,” the miffed actor told a laughing audience later.

At home, an ABC presenter was caught circling her fingers at the side of her head in the universal sign for “madman” when he appeared on TV, and he once slammed “carper fleas” who were undermining him.

His face erupts in a scarlet flush when he is excited and recently he said that building dams was “what blows my hair back”. He has the unfashionable no-neck build of a rugby union forward, which he once was.

In just a few months as opposition finance spokesman in 2010 he confused billions and millions and warned of an “economic Armageddon” which didn’t happen.

“Our Treasurer says our debt will peak out at $315 billion,” he told a Nationals conference. “All this billions, quillions, Brazilians, whatever you want to call them, they’re just numbers.”

After the job was taken from him he agreed he probably wasn’t the best choice for the portfolio. Barnaby was joining others by laughing at himself.

“Barnaby is pretty entertaining,” said Labor’s Penny Wong last month. “But he is also erratic and he simply doesn’t have the sober and stable approach to public policy that Australians expect holders of high office.”

Then there is the real Barnaby, who with deliberate steps made himself a household name, moved from the Senate to the House of Representatives and aggregated influence to get where he is today — the Deputy Prime Minister.

Fair to say, Johnny Depp is no fan of our new Deputy Prime Minister. Picture: Mark Davis/Getty Images

Mr Joyce makes no apologies for pumping up his profile and sometimes being goofy. He has done it to stand out in what he calls “a crowded media market”. He has made himself an identifiable political product.

But there has been a serious side to this ruthless strategy.

Just before midnight on the night last September when Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott a red and grim faced Barnaby Joyce spoke to reporters at the Senate entrance of Parliament House.

He was giving the new Prime Minister a warning that he would have to deliver on matters important to the Nationals if he wanted the Coalition agreement renewed smoothly.

And he followed through over the coming weeks, forcing changes in the way water policy was managed in the government. Barnaby Joyce did this, not then Nationals leader Warren Truss. And in his first few hours as Nationals leader he gained another cabinet spot for the party.

Johnny Depp’s dogs were here illegally. The actor and his wife had breached barriers which have, for example, prevented the rabies found in dogs in Bali from reaching here.

It wasn’t a stunt. Depp was an arrogant danger to our biosecurity.

Barnaby Joyce’s grassroots campaign against Labor’s carbon price — remembers his invention of the $100 roast? — was a significant reason why Labor lost office, and why Tony Abbott ousted then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.

We will see less of the quirky Joyce, now he has arrived where he wanted.

He said today that in his new position there will be less latitude for the old Barnaby to be seen.

Barnaby Joyce, when in the Senate, crossed the floor to vote against Coalition policy 28 times. He is no dopey pushover, as Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten will discover.