Barnaby Joyce ‘has left Nationals in factions’, says Scott Mitchell

A former federal director of the Nationals has blamed Barnaby Joyce for having divided the party.

Barnaby Joyce enters the Senate doors yesterday. Picture: Kym Smith

The former federal director of the Nationals, Scott Mitchell, has blamed Barnaby Joyce for having divided the party through his own ambition, leaving it riddled by personality-driven factionalism for the first time in its 98-year history.

His comments came as senior party sources last night said the coalition agreement had been finalised and signed on Monday following Michael McCormack’s elevation to the party leadership.

A special 90-minute Nationals partyroom meeting was to have been held from 8.30 this morning. However, this was called off yesterday. Several Nationals MPs, unaware the agreement had been finalised, argued the cancelled meeting had been intended to discuss any revisions to the top-secret Coalition document.

Yesterday Mr McCormack was holding discussions on changes to the Nationals’ frontbench line-up as some MPs lobbied for an overhaul, arguing too many cabinet positions are held by senators.

In an opinion piece in The Australian today, Mr Mitchell says people are “sick” of the leadership style that panders to populism and now divides the party.

The indictment of the former deputy prime minister’s leadership came yesterday as Labor ­attempted to drag Malcolm Turnbull into the debate over who identified Catherine Marriott as the woman accusing Mr Joyce of sexual harassment. The claim led to Mr Joyce resigning as leader.

Mr Mitchell, the campaign director for the 2013 and 2016 elections, says the 2016 victory — in which the Nationals gained a seat in their second term in government for the first time since the 1920s — was not because of a “household name”. “It has been achieved because the Nationals ran ... electorate-by-electorate campaigns focusing on important local issues,” he writes.

“Barnaby Joyce has been a strong, effective leader of the Nationals, but history will record that he was the first leader to factionalise the 98-year-old party.

“Joyce could cut through with a clear message when others missed their mark, and he delivered several good agricultural policies. But the newly factionalised Nationals — divided not by philosophy, but by personality, populism and ambition — were unattractive to voters. The Australian people are sick of this style of leadership and the political soap opera of Canberra.”

He says the election of Mr McCormack as leader and Deputy Prime Minister would ensure “that style of leadership and the division it caused is brought to an end”.

“The Nationals must now work as a united and disciplined team for their constituents,” he writes. “A united team working on the substantive issues that matter to rural and regional Australians — rather than populist policy issues that often have unintended consequences and fail to deliver long-term benefits — is what is now most important. It is a secondary concern that the Nationals’ leader be a household name.”

The sexual harassment claim that induced Mr Joyce to resign — after resisting calls for two weeks to stand down over the political furore triggered by his affair with his former staffer and mother of his unborn child, Vikki Campion — is now the focus of opposition attack.

Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek argued the leaking of the identity of Ms Marriott, a respected leader in the agriculture sector and a former West Australian Rural Woman of the Year, sent the “worst possible message to women who’ve been subjected to sexual harassment”.

“This has been a sterling example of exactly how not to deal with a sexual harassment complaint within an organisation, and the Prime Minister has to answer for who has leaked this woman’s identity to the media,” she said.

Mr Turnbull challenged Ms Plibersek to make an allegation in the parliament if she believed an MP responsible. “Members of parliament privy to those complaints should not disclose the identity of the complainant,” he said.

Some Nationals argue the leak was part of a push to blast Mr Joyce from the deputy prime ministership. The complaint was sent to the party’s federal executive on February 20, the height of the row.

Liberal deputy leader and WA MP Julie Bishop said yesterday the disclosure of Ms Marriott’s name was “deeply regrettable” and could complicate any probe into the sexual harassment claim.

The Nationals have denied leaking. Federal president Larry Anthony has rejected suggestions Ms Marriott was induced to complain to pressure Mr Joyce to quit.

Yesterday Mr Joyce said he did not expect to become leader again but did not rule out another tilt for the job. “I never rule anything in or anything out because later on in life you look like a hypocrite,” he said.