Joyce’s three years of “Barnaby policy” from the backbenches

Barnaby Joyce pledges to pursue ‘Nationals policy, not Barnaby policy’, but he contradicted the government more than once recently.

Barnaby Joyce during Question Time on Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has pledged to pursue “Nationals policy, not Barnaby policy” now that he is back in the top job after three years of contradicting government positions.

Since he resigned as deputy prime minister in 2018, Mr Joyce has aired a range of controversial views on everything from refugees to nuclear power to Julian Assange. But the incoming deputy prime minister on Monday said his policy positions would now be guided by his colleagues in the junior Coalition partner, as he seeks to negotiate a new cross-party agreement with Scott Morrison.

“As a backbencher, you have the capacity … to try to articulate what you believe is an important issue,” he said in Canberra.

“Now, as leader, I’ll be talking with my partyroom about what they believe is best for them and then fighting on that premise. I will be guided by my partyroom. It is not Barnaby policy, it’s Nationals policy. And Nationals policy is what I will be an advocate for.”

As early as last week, the Prime Minister’s incoming deputy was contradicting the government line by arguing for the Murugappan family – who have been in legal limbo for years as they fight attempts to deport them to Sri Lanka – to stay in Australia and return to their adopted home of Biloela in Queensland.

“Tharnicaa and Kopika were born in Australia. Maybe if their names were Jane and Sally we’d think twice about sending them back to another country which they’re not from,” the Nationals MP told the Seven Network.

“Why not send them to Southern Sudan. Why not send them to Rwanda or Belarus? They’re also countries they weren’t born in.”

Mr Joyce also recently contradicted the government on whether cabinet minister Christian Porter should face an independent inquiry into allegations he raped a woman as a teenager.

Mr Porter has vehemently denied those allegations and said an independent inquiry into the claims – which the police cannot pursue as the complainant has since died – was contrary to the justice afforded to all Australians.

Mr Joyce wrote on his Facebook page in March that Mr Porter’s best avenue to clear his name was an independent inquiry.

”Christian Porter may not want an independent inquiry but he has got one by default,” Mr Joyce said at the time.

“The alternative should be an inquiry, in camera, the confidential one, not the media’s camera. A vastly more dignified, appropriate alternative for such an emotive and serious allegation, otherwise the current vacuum may hang like fog all the way through the rest of a quite remarkable career.”

Mr Joyce has notably called for Australia not to sign up to a net-zero emissions carbon target and has joined Nationals MPs in supporting a taxpayer-funded coal power plant. But he has also heavily backed nuclear power, and floated the idea that people living close to nuclear reactors should have cheaper power.

“If you can see the reactor (from your house), your power is for free. If you are within 50km of a reactor, you get power for half price,” he said in July 2019.

Mr Joyce – a social conservative – has also been outspoken on LGBTI issues. When the government floated banning private schools from expelling gay students in December 2018, Mr Joyce said private schools should keep the right to oust transgender students.

“If I send my child to an all-girls’ school, I don’t want the complication and the possibility, and they haven’t completely ruled it out, that if someone turns up and says, ‘I want to identify as a woman, I want to identify as a girl, I want to go into your bathrooms, I want to go into your change rooms, I want to be educated’,’’ Mr Joyce said at the time.

Mr Joyce has also called on Australia to do more to support WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and prevent attempts to extradite him from Britain to the US on espionage charges.

“Sovereignty is not just for people you like … it might be for someone you detest. It might be for someone that you find ­completely obnoxious,” Mr Joyce said in 2019.