‘Barnaby rule’ hides former deputy PM in his seat

The Nationals plan to hide former party leader Barnaby Joyce during the election campaign with a new rule effectively barring him from conducting political trips outside his electorate even as the Coalition risks losing seats to rebel MPs.

The National Party rule requires shadow ministers to get permission from party leader and Joyce’s rival David Littleproud to travel to other electorates, in a move designed to ensure MPs only go where they are most useful to the party.

Barnaby Joyce and David Littleproud are rivals in the National Party.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Senior party sources confirmed the rule implemented late last year is a strategy to muzzle Joyce despite the party falling short on fundraising and the Coalition facing several turncoat MPs and tight regional races from a rising number of well-funded independents.

Three opposition MPs will run against the Coalition as independents in the election due by May. The trio includes former Victorian Liberal MP Russell Broadbent, who has been a member of parliament on and off for 35 years.

Broadbent confirmed to this masthead he would run as an independent in his Gippsland seat of Monash, declaring he had “unfinished business” and would “give back to the Liberal Party that which they have given me” after being dumped as a party candidate.

Joyce, who has twice been Nationals leader, is a big fundraiser but a rival to current leader Littleproud and has often bucked the party line to advance conservative positions. Joyce declined to comment on the rule change requiring permission for political visits.

One senior National source familiar with the rationale behind the rule confirmed it was in part designed to enforce discipline on Joyce.

“Women didn’t trust us at the last election and Barnaby was a key reason for that. Why would we have him in seats where he hurts us?” they said.

At the last election, former leader Michael McCormack suggested Joyce, who the teals and Labor featured in attack ads in part because of his outspoken criticism of the Coalition’s net zero emissions pledge, was a drag on the Coalition’s vote. Joyce is the least popular MP in Australia behind far-left activist Senator Lidia Thorpe, according to this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor, which mirrors findings from the Coalition’s internal pollster Freshwater.

Littleproud downplayed the rule change, telling this masthead: “This is about a co-ordinated approach about using shadow ministers effectively from and it applies to both parties,” he said.

The opposition has a tiny margin of error if it wants to win the election because it starts from a big seat deficit, requiring it to rise from 55 seats to more than 70 likely required to form even a minority government.

The Nationals face hard contests in a host of regional seats, complicated by the party falling millions short of its fundraising targets, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

Former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack is being targeted by well-known farmer James Gooden, while Coalition frontbencher Pat Conaghan and Dan Tehan are facing tight battles against teal independents and incumbent Coalition MPs in other regional seats including Grey, Lyne and Hinkler are retiring.

Outcast Liberal Ian Goodenough will run as an independent against his former party in the seat of Moore in northern Perth. The Nationals are bracing for a loss in Calare, west of the Blue Mountains in NSW, where former Nationals minister Andrew Gee, who quit over the party’s opposition to the Voice to parliament, will run as an independent. Gee said there was a “strong feeling that the Nationals don’t truly fight for country people anymore and just do what the Liberals say”.

The National Party has not been deposed from a seat at a federal election since 2010.

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