Barnaby sticks to script -- almost

Barnaby Joyce is better known than his boss

BARNABY Joyce made his name as a maverick.

The plain-speaking, climate change sceptic who led the Coalition revolt on carbon trading that put Tony Abbott into the Liberal leadership, was first rewarded with the finance portfolio and then dumped for fear his mouth would damage the campaign.

But all that appears to be forgotten -- with the exception of the man, himself -- who yesterday seemed to ascend to the leadership of the Nationals, taking the reigns of the wombat trail, as the party's hustings are known, into the battleground state of Queensland.

While his boss Warren Truss was delivering a speech in Mildura in wintry Victoria, the Nationals' senate leader was kicking-off the campaign in the tropical north.

"Barnaby is one of the most influential politicians in Canberra," said Liberal senator Ian McDonald after a speech by Senator Joyce to about 20 supporters at the Mareeba RSL, north of Cairns.

The Labor-held electorates of Leichhardt, which centres on Cairns, as well as Dawson, further south to Mackay and Flynn, around Gladstone, are all winnable for the Coalition. Cairns, where the near-miss recession dried up tourism, has the nation's highest unemployment rate, and the mining towns of Gladstone and Mackay have been the focal point of concern about the emissions trading scheme and resources tax. It is a deliberate strategy of the Coalition, contesting a federal election for the first time in the state under the Liberal National Party banner, that Senator Joyce is leading the attack.

"He has the highest profile in the party, people know him, what he stands for and they like the way he talks," one strategist said.

As European backpackers looked on at the Cairns lagoon, Senator Joyce launched into a tirade against Labor's $200 million regional assistance package, drawn out of the existing housing affordability program.

"They literally got last year's Christmas presents, wrapped them up with new paper and put a new bow on them and stuck them under the tree," he said.

With senators Brett Mason and McDonald and Ed Morrison -- the LNP's candidate for Kennedy, held by independent Bob Katter -- he put to rest fears about his lack of discipline, sticking to the themes of Labor waste and debt.

But not entirely to script, Australians would lose "more and more of our freedom" as programs were funded from "China, the Middle East and Japan".