Joyce, McKenzie jostle to keep Coalition frontbench roles after election

Prominent opposition frontbenchers Bridget Mckenzie and Barnaby Joyce are among the Nationals who could be demoted to the backbench if the Liberals, as expected, pick up extra seats in the election, forcing the junior Coalition party to surrender up to three lucrative cabinet posts.

Under the terms of the Coalition agreement between the Liberals and Nationals, the parties are awarded cabinet positions based on the proportion of MPs they each have elected to parliament.

Barnaby Joyce, left, has been a rival to Nationals leader David Littleproud for years.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Nationals are overrepresented with seven spots to the Liberals’ 16 in the current 23-member shadow cabinet.

In the last parliament, the junior Coalition partner should have been allocated either five or six shadow cabinet seats based on the proportion of Nationals (20) to the number of Liberals (63). A seventh seat on the frontbench was given to Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to help her lead the fight against the Voice to parliament referendum.

This masthead revealed in February that Nationals leader David Littleproud plans to boot Barnaby Joyce, a rival for the leadership, to the backbench after the next election. The party leader and Price are considered the two Nationals MPs whose positions in the Coalition cabinet are safest.

Three-time party leader Joyce – who, according to party sources not able to speak publicly, has called Littleproud “spivweasel” in private conversations in recent months – is resigned to losing his cabinet spot after a long career in parliament dating to 2005.

But the shadow cabinet places occupied by deputy leader Perrin Davey, senate leader Bridget McKenzie, trade spokesman Kevin Hogan and resources spokeswoman Susan McDonald are all under threat.

Three spots – that of Nationals leader, deputy leader and Senate leader – are automatically awarded cabinet positions. Those three roles are filled by Littleproud, Davey and McKenzie.

If they keep their roles after the election, there could be only one place left in the shadow cabinet for Price, Hogan and McDonald.

That’s because the more seats the Liberals win from Labor, the Greens and independents at this election, the fewer shadow cabinet seats will be available to the Nationals in the next parliament. The Nationals’ allocation of seats in the next shadow cabinet, or future cabinet, is expected to fall to either four or five places.

Peter Dutton and David Littleproud inspect flood damage in Queensland on Monday.Credit: James Brickwood

The Nationals are targeting just a handful of winnable seats at this election, including the new seat of Bullwinkel in Western Australia and the NSW seat of Calare, whereas the Liberals have at least 20 target seats in their sights across the country. Even if the Coalition falls short of government, polling suggests the Liberals will gain seats around the country - increasing their representation and ratcheting up pressure to reduce the number of Nationals on the frontbench.

Five sources in the National Party familiar with internal discussions and who asked not to be named confirmed to this masthead that the jostling for post-election positions was already under way.

One of those five sources said: “There is no question that Barnaby will be forced out – it’s just a question of who else and how many go”.

“People think Kevin [Hogan] will keep his spot because he is close to David [Littleproud]. Jacinta [Price] and David won’t lose their posts. So that means at least one of Bridget [McKenzie], Susan [McDonald] and Perrin [Davey] will have to say bye-bye, and maybe two of them.”

A second source said: “Jacinta is basically untouchable and Kevin is close to DLP [Littleproud], so it’s gonna be interesting who else survives.”

A third source cautioned that while the proportion of Nationals MPs mattered, the Coalition agreement struck after each election could allow for additional representation in the cabinet for the regional party.

The leaders of the Liberal and National parties sign a new Coalition agreement at the start of each parliamentary term, and while the document is never released publicly, it is widely understood that the agreement contains deals on cabinet representation and key policy areas such as climate change, money for dam-building projects and other Nationals projects.

Successive Liberal leaders, including Dutton, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison have found space to include an extra, usually fifth, Nationals MP in the cabinet in the interests of keeping the peace within the Coalition.

But several Liberal MPs told this masthead they would be pushing for their leader to take portfolios back from the Nationals and award them to Liberals after the next election if, as expected, the ratio of Liberals to Nationals MPs changes.

Littleproud, Joyce, McDonald, McKenzie, Hogan and McKenzie were all contacted for comment.

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