Barnaby Joyce squeezing life out of the Nationals

Cartoon: Tom Jellett.

If anything, the leadership upheavals over the past decade that have rendered Canberra the coup capital of the world have shown they work. That is, despite the lies, the blood, the trashing of reputations, days filled with bitterness and regret and the karma that follows, the protagonists believe the positives far outweigh the negatives. Otherwise they would stop.

Julia Gillard remains the country’s only female prime minister after agreeing to dispatch Kevin Rudd before his first term had expired. Rudd returned the favour, stalked her until she dropped, then led Labor to defeat while saving what was left of the furniture.

After dispatching Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull won — just — the 2016 election that the majority of Liberal MPs believed Abbott would have lost. They were right.

The narrow victory allowed ­Abbott to destroy Turnbull’s prime ministership, created the circumstances for Peter Dutton to challenge and provided the opportunity for Scott Morrison, with the help of his God Squad, to outsmart them all by ensuring Turnbull was rendered terminal, wresting the leadership and then narrowly winning the election. Miraculous indeed.

It is no surprise then that Barnaby Joyce, who has divided the Nationals and created havoc for the Liberals from the day he arrived in Canberra as a senator 15 years ago, has demonstrated his resolve not to rest until he destroys Michael McCormack.

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce watches on as his leader, Michael McCormack, arrives for Question Time last week. Picture: AAP

Driven partly by his unshakeable illogical belief he was robbed of the leadership in 2018, Joyce shows not a scintilla of concern for the damage he inflicts each day on the Coalition, the Prime Minister and the body politic. The last former leader who followed that script, whose acolytes also pretended they were fighting for the soul of their party, rather than out of hatred, revenge or blind ambition, ended up losing his seat.

Surrounded by the chaos he helped create, in a “you ain’t seen nothing yet” conversation, implying there was more and worse to come, Joyce told one senior member of the government a few days ago to make sure their campaign finances were sorted.

Joyce’s colleagues who relayed the remark took it to mean he was prepared to force the government to an election if he didn’t get his way. So fragile and so fraught is the crisis now enveloping the Coalition that Liberal MPs were told not to respond in any way that might escalate it.

They got a taste of what can happen on Tuesday afternoon when five Nationals voted with Labor and the crossbenchers to elect Llew O’Brien as deputy Speaker, instead of Damian Drum who was McCormack’s preferred candidate.

The evil genius who orchestrated this humiliation for Morrison and McCormack was the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke. Burke saw the potential to create even more mischief in a divided party last Thursday when the previous deputy Speaker, Kevin Hogan, was appointed an assistant minister, creating a vacancy that could be decided only by a vote in the House of Representatives. Labor hoped that one of the many unhappy Nationals would run against Drum. It initially suspected, for good reason, that it would be Ken O’Dowd.

Attention shifted to O’Brien after he quit the Nationals’ partyroom. Burke did not know for certain that O’Brien, regarded as unpredictable, would accept the nomination that Burke had put forward until the moment O’Brien stood up in the house and declared that he would. Burke took a punt that paid off big time, blindsiding the government and making O’Brien’s pledge of continuing fidelity to his side sound hollow.

The only person with a sharper political radar and more familiar than Burke with the rules is the Speaker, Tony Smith, whose early suspicions something could happen were heightened by the good behaviour of Labor MPs during question time. No one was thrown out. They had all been warned not to interject, and if anyone did, they were told immediately to shut up.

If there was to be a vote with an alternative candidate — and the last private word from the other side was that there would not be — Labor wanted every MP to be there. Just in case.

The Member for Flynn, Ken O’Dowd. Picture: Matt Taylor

Interactions between Joyce and O’Brien both inside and outside the chamber fuelled concerns Joyce had acted as go-between, especially as O’Dowd later told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas that he had been prepared to run and Joyce was going to nominate him for the deputy Speaker’s job. O’Dowd said he pulled out, mindful of the damage it would inflict on the Nationals. Even so, he still voted for O’Brien against Drum.

None of it augurs well for the Coalition and its current leaders. It has cast a pall of gloom and resentment across the government, where there is a view, even in Queensland, that unless it neutralises climate change as an issue it will lose the next election, simply because every other message will be drowned out. Mind you, with a train wreck interview on Sunday when opposition deputy leader Richard ­Marles was “Speered” on the ABC’s Insiders, Labor’s position remains as clear as the lump of coal Morrison took with him into question time when he was treasurer.

Adroit leaders should be able to convince people of the importance of the resources industry as well as the need to deal with climate change. There are smart people around Morrison capable of equipping him to do it. As he has proven, armed with a mission and a script, he can be unbeatable. What he is missing is discipline, goodwill and clear air.