Federal election: Barnaby Joyce slams ‘teal’ independents, calls them ‘selfish’

During a live TV interview as the vote count got underway, Barnaby Joyce embarked on a tirade against the independent candidates.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce unleashed on the “teal” independent candidates who were challenging a number of moderate Liberal MPs across the country last night, calling them “selfish” and “self-indulgent”.

Speaking to the ABC’s election night panel shortly after polls closed on the east coast, Mr Joyce said he was “angry” about their campaign against the government.

“If you believe independents are the way to go – I’m so angry with this. Because it’s self-indulgent and selfish,” Mr Joyce vented.

“If you believe independents are the way to go, let’s have 151 of them (there are 151 seats in the parliament). Let’s have total chaos in our nation’s parliament. And we all know we would be a laughing stock.

“So it’s almost a sense of, if you vote Labor you’ll vote and stick there, and we know you will because of party discipline. If you vote Nationals or Liberals you’ll vote and stick there. And then, ‘We have a right in the middle to go whichever way we want whenever we like.’ That is just so, so selfish.”

Barnaby Joyce ripped into the independents on the ABC.

At one point in the interview, panellist Annabel Crabb pointed out that Mr Joyce himself had “crossed the floor against the Howard government, I think, more than any human being in the history of floor crossing”.

“In this campaign alone, the National Party – and particularly Matt Canavan – made comments about the net zero deal not appreciated by the inner city moderates trying to defend seats against the teals,” she said.

Mr Joyce said he “never contemplated not giving confidence” to the government, even in his “early days as a backbencher”.

He said Mr Canavan was a “backbencher” and backbenchers were entitled to speak their minds.

Independents ended up defeating sitting Liberal MPs in Curtin, Goldstein, Kooyong, Mackellar, North Sydney and Wentworth, with high profile incumbents Dave Sharma, Tim Wilson, Trent Zimmerman and even Treasurer Josh Frydenberg turfed out.

The victorious teals will join current MPs Zali Steggall and Helen Haines on the crossbench.

One of the threatened MPs, Mr Wilson, also spoke to the ABC at about 7pm, before his own defeat was declared.

“Whose fault is it that you have found yourself so vulnerable to a campaign from a politically inexperienced independent?” anchor Leigh Sales asked him.

“Well, Leigh, I’m simply not prepared to accept the basis of your question. Every election is tough. You have to go out and earn the trust of the community for another three years,” Mr Wilson responded.

“What we’ve seen is an unholy alliance come together – GetUp, Extinction Rebellion, the Labor Party, the Greens, all abandoning their traditional stance to back a former ABC journalist.

“And when you aggregate everything, about $3 million for campaign support for one objective: to remove me from parliament and to remove Goldstein from Liberal hands.

“So it is the unholy alliance and the desperate moves made that have led this to an interesting contest.”

Independent candidate Monique Ryan is contesting Kooyong. Picture: William West/AFP

Allegra Spender is the candidate for Wentworth. Picture: Darren Leigh Roberts

He said the part he played in the Liberals’ “retiree tax” scare campaign in 2019 (though he didn’t call it a scare campaign, obviously) had led this “alliance” to coalesce against him.

Mr Wilson claimed his opponents had engaged in a “campaign of deception”.

“I literally approved the establishment of Australia’s offshore wind industry, yet they ran a constant smear campaign that we weren’t taking action on climate change,” he argued.

“When you presented them with the facts, they said it was irrelevant because it doesn’t suit their narrative. It is always disappointing when those types of people run a campaign, but that’s the nature of politics but it doesn’t stack up.”

Originally published as Federal election: Barnaby Joyce slams ‘teal’ independents, calls them ‘selfish’