Barnaby Joyce poses a conundrum to vex the wisest of Nationals

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

The implosion of Barnaby Joyce — personally and professionally — in and of itself risks bringing down the Turnbull government. In fact, it puts the political potency of the Coalition at risk well beyond the Turnbull era.

The man once described by former prime minister Tony Abbott as Australia’s best retail politician has become a dead weight around the necks of his Liberal and ­Nationals colleagues.

The way Joyce has conducted himself generally, the contradictions in his calls for privacy versus selling his story to the highest bidder and some of the specifics (for example, blaming his partner for taking the cash or earlier suggesting the child might not even be his) have put Joyce’s retail days behind him. We’re not supposed to talk about this now that he’s on personal leave but not dwelling on it is perhaps the more realistic refrain.

• Barnaby Joyce, Vikki Campion open up in tell-all TV interview

There is no coming back politically from the way Joyce’s soap opera has played out in public. Anyone in the Nationals hoping for a return of the man who helped the party retain all its seats at the 2016 election, even picking one up from the Liberals, and saving the Turnbull government in the process are kidding themselves. Not now, not ever.

If the best interests of the ­Nationals are the only thing to consider, Joyce will quietly ­announce his intention not to contest the next election. He may yet do that. Let’s hope it doesn’t ­involve another paid interview.

Those within the Nationals late last year who criticised the West Australian Nationals for coming out early and calling on Joyce to step down as leader and deputy prime minister may like to reflect on how wrong they were. WA Nationals leader Mia Davies showed courage when ­others should have done the same. If only there were more parliamentarians like her, more women in Coalition ranks at state and ­federal levels.

But it’s the political impact of the loss of Joyce as an electoral asset, and the impact his loss will have on one of Australia’s oldest political parties, that most interests me.

Before the rise and rise of Barnaby the Nationals were a party at a crossroads. There was growing ­informal factionalism as moderate younger generations in coastal communities and town centres joined the party, bashing heads with the older generation of conservative rural members. There was a genuine paradox when fighting to win seats with strong environmental threads running through them, as well as more socially conservative ­regions highly sceptical about ­issues such as global warming.

The merger of the Coalition parties in Queensland presents its own challenge for the junior ­Coalition partner, as does the growing policy divide between Nationals and Liberals over how interventionist government should be, for example.

Whatever Joyce’s faults, electorally he was a supreme asset. He might have left Queensland in his search for a lower house seat in his quest to become deputy prime minister, but his electoral benefit to the Liberal National Party up north remained significant. And Joyce was a powerful enough figure within the Coalition relationship not to let the junior partner be bullied by the Liberals. This was important, remembering that when the regions were stronger, so too were the Nationals back in the days of powerful figures such as John “Black Jack” McEwen.

Importantly, Joyce also had learned how to manage the ­Coalition relationship as an ­insider, not as a maverick at risk of blowing up the government at any moment. Quite apart from his personal dramas, Joyce has regressed back to being that maverick on the backbench, more intent on sniping than acting collegially.

Notwithstanding the internal problems One Nation has had this week, the minor party is another challenge for the Nationals, and it’s a bigger threat without the Joyce who once led the party. NSW’s Michael McCormack and his Victorian deputy Bridget ­McKenzie will find it much harder than Joyce would have to muscle up to Pauline Hanson in Queensland at the next election.

Electorally, three of the four most marginal government seats are held by Queensland LNP members, two of them Nationals. Even if Malcolm Turnbull’s team picks up a seat or two in the late July by-elections, the Coalition still would lose its majority if it lost the three Queensland seats of Capricornia, Forde and Flynn, the latter the safest with a 1.04 per cent margin.

Added to these precariously placed LNP seats are two more LNP seats on margins of less than 2 per cent, with the NSW Nationals seat of Page on a mere 2.3 per cent margin. And there are three further LNP seats on margins of less than 4 per cent, two of which are regional, including the seat of Dawson held by George Christensen, whose reputation was irretrievably damaged last year courtesy of his white-anting without the courage of follow through peddled to Andrew Bolt.

All up, that’s eight seats held in Queensland which, including the marginal NSW Nationals seat of Page, brings the total to nine. The loss of Australia’s best retail politician as Nationals leader and a popular figure in Queensland will have a profound impact on the government’s ability to retain any of these seats, much less all of them, which is what it must do to retain its majority.

Perhaps the biggest impact the loss of Joyce may have on the ­Nationals isn’t what transpires at the next election but what happens after that. If he stays in parliament, he continues to operate as damaged goods — no longer a unifying figure for the Coalition but a constant reminder of what was. Do not underestimate the difficulties of Joyce rebuilding his reputation after the extent to which he has trashed it. But political parties are bubbles, and the Nationals are no different. If Joyce stays, looking to the past for inspir­ation rather than the reality of the present, it wouldn’t surprise me if the party brought him back as leader in opposition.

The same way football fans look to once-great players to ­deliver what their bodies are no longer capable of, the Nationals risk doing similar with Joyce if the looming election is a catastrophe. Never mind that he more than anyone will be responsible for it.

The catch-22 for the Nationals is that the political picture may not look much brighter even if Joyce does the right thing and departs at the next election (or before). He was undeniably central to the ­Nationals’ electoral success in 2016. Without him, the divisions of the future risk being that much more fractious. And no longer having the old Joyce to sell a retail political message means the ­Nationals risk being picked off by rural independents in seat-by-seat contests or torn apart in the ­regions by One Nation and by the Greens in coastal communities.

It’s a bleak picture.

Peter van Onselen is a professor at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.