Low-profile Barnaby burrows for votes on the wombat trail

Barnaby Joyce has been flying under the radar, rejecting presidential-style campaigning as he makes his pitch to voters in ­country pubs and shops across Australia.

Barnaby Joyce leaves them laughing in Bowen.

Barnaby Joyce has been flying under the radar, rejecting presidential-style campaigning as he makes his pitch to voters in ­country pubs and shops across Australia.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader has for the past month been missing from ­national election coverage as he visited small towns in Queensland, NSW, the Northern Territory and Victoria to pursue the art of bush politics.

The regional focus is partly ­because he is not popular in the inner cities where independents, Greens and Liberals are pushing for greater action on carbon emissions, but it is also because he knows where he is of the greatest value to the Coalition.

“The best form of politics in ­regional areas is under the radar and more personal one-on-one,” Mr Joyce told The Weekend Australian from outside a McDonald’s in Singleton, NSW, while waiting for chicken, fries and a chocolate thick shake.

“People are more honest with you if you are standing in a McDonald’s. They may not be going to vote for you, but I find they are respectful, rarely are they rude, and if they aren’t going to vote for you then you respect that.

On the ‘wombat’ trail with Barnaby Joyce

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“Macro media has its place, but one-on-one changes votes ­because it is understanding that if you are speaking to a grandmother you are also speaking to the kids and her grandchildren.

“It’s understanding that people want to hear a macro message about their nation, but they want to hear Part B, which is: what is ­important to me in my daily life.”

After four weeks on the road Mr Joyce wants to see more localised and less presidential-style politics in Australia.

“When I gave a grant to help the Armidale Rams rugby league team with some dressing sheds one of the ladies who had been campaigning broke into tears,” he said.

“That proves the power of the direct relationship between their everyday lives and what they are seeing.

“I’ve been to places some wouldn’t consider going – Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, the Palmerston markets in Darwin, the water park in Gladstone, the Rams rugby league ground in Armidale, a small factory in Singleton, community groups in Shepparton, and I don’t fly in and fly out.

“In the regional cities the political effect is like a ripple on a pond. The right thing in the place shows you understand their lives and that is the message that gets out – it might be a hall in a small town – and then you become relevant to their lives.”

Mr Joyce believes modern politics often lacks the personal touch and wants to see less US-style campaigning.

“You want people to walk up to and talk to you in the street,” he said. “I was in Victoria and I’d stop the car and they would walk up to you like they know you, and that’s exactly what you want. You don’t want to be Hollywood.

“Politics in Australia is incredibly egalitarian and once the crowd is too big it becomes Hollywood and you lose the personal touch.”

As someone who was regularly attacked by his Labor and Greens opponents in parliament, Mr Joyce said the atmosphere was different on the “wombat trail” – the country campaign road trodden by all Nationals leaders since the days of Doug Anthony, Tim Fischer and John Anderson.

“Canberra is a crazy boarding school by nature and sometimes it gets boarding-school culture and that means everyone thinks everyone is the same as you, including the media,” he said.

“I have found from a lot of media people that once you get out of Canberra you think what the hell we were talking about down there?”

As one of only two journalists on the 2022 wombat trail, ­Amanda Copp, political reporter for the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia’s National Radio News, reported this week that “the vibe couldn’t be more different from the Prime Minister’s campaign”.

“Campaigning with Barnaby is relaxed. The media travels with him on the plane, often invited to sit and have a yarn with ‘the boss’,” she reported for the Judith ­Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

“Everywhere we go, the public is there too. We stop at McDonald’s for a quick lunch or the local pie shop.

“Compared to the army of journalists, cameramen and staffers that follow the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader around, the entourage following Barnaby is minuscule. But the interactions with locals are invaluable.

“Areas where most of the ­Canberra press pack would be talking about climate change, ­locals seem to care more about simply having a job, particularly in the mining industry.

“Where the media might ask about ICAC, locals say it’s roads and infrastructure that will swing their vote.

“I think if more of the media had travelled on the wombat trail in the 2019 election, where the overwhelming prediction from the press was a Labor win, then Scott Morrison’s eventual ‘miracle’ victory would have been less of a surprise.”

Mr Joyce’s point is that if the Coalition does win on the back of a below-the-radar regional campaign it will be a “salient wake-up call” for all politicians who have pursued a US-style presidential campaign.