Joyce blasts Liberals: we kept you out of opposition

Barnaby Joyce reveals he considered quitting politics in an emotional interview in which he slaps down his Liberal colleagues.

Barnaby Joyce on the campaign trail in Bundameer. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Barnaby Joyce has revealed he considered quitting politics this year, in an emotional interview in which he slapped down his Liberal Party colleagues for sniping at the Nationals over the citizenship debacle.

Mr Joyce told The Australian of the strain that built up on himself and his family ahead of the High Court decision last week that has now cost the Nationals leader and his deputy, Fiona Nash, their jobs and destabilised the Turnbull government.

Confronting the backbiting head-on, he said the Nationals had saved the Coalition government when its majority was slashed to a single seat at last year’s double-dissolution election. “They will go off-the-record and say it, so I am going to go on the record,” Mr Joyce said.

“My name is Barnaby Joyce. The only reason you are in government is because the National Party held all their seats and won one (more). Otherwise, you would not have to have this discussion because you would be in what you call the opposition.”

In the likely event that he wins the December 2 by-election in the northern NSW seat of New ­England — triggered by his disqualification last Friday for unwittingly holding dual New Zealand citizenship — Mr Joyce said he would seek cabinet ­approval and Labor Party support for an “omnibus” referendum to simplify the eligibility requirements for MPs and tackle other constitutional questions, including recognition of indigenous people and the republic.

For the first time, he admitted how close he came to walking away from politics during the 10 weeks he was in limbo while the High Court deliberated on whether he was entitled to stay in federal parliament as deputy prime minister and agriculture minister. During that time, innuendo about his private life — sourced in part to social media posts by his bitter political rival, former independent MP for New England Tony Windsor — appeared in some media outlets.

Asked if he had considered not running in the by-election, Mr Joyce said: “Of course … I thought about it. I think you should always think about all alternatives in any decision that you make, and I certainly thought about that alternative. I put it aside, I fired up, got going again.”

He hesitated when asked whether he had in mind the welfare of his wife, Natalie, and their four daughters.

“You want straight answers and I want to give you straight answers, but not to go unnecessarily into my private life,” he said.

“I always believe a person’s private life is precisely that. It has nothing to do with politics. It is private and you are doing a disservice to yourself and everybody else if you try to explain what is private.” Mr Joyce said he would ­remain as federal leader of the Nationals and the deputy prime minister’s position would be kept vacant until the New England by-election was settled. With the withdrawal of Mr Windsor from the race and opinion polling showing that he had up to 60 per cent of the vote, Mr Joyce is a hot favourite to be returned.

In the meantime, “citizen Joyce can say a lot of things that deputy prime minister Joyce can’t”, he said.

On the tensions inside the Coalition over the push by some Nationals to have the party’s acting parliamentary leader, Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion, elevated to the role of deputy prime minister, Mr Joyce said: “I think Nigel would be very good.”

He said the Nationals, though the junior Coalition partner, had a crucial place in Australian democracy. “We have a different constituency, our role is that we don’t want to be the prime minister but, by gosh, we want to make sure that we are pretty close to those people in the weatherboard and iron (homes).” This was a nod to his encounter yesterday with 87-year-old Jill Skewes, a friend of his parents who lives next to the disused butcher’s shop her family ran for 40 years in the hamlet of Bendemeer, outside Tamworth. Barefoot and feisty, she told Mr Joyce she could remember when he was a boy kicking around the rustic area.

“It’s not an egotistical thing to say that you have got to be the deputy prime minister in the National Party,” he said later over a pub lunch. “It’s an essential thing because for these people to be heard, you must be in close contact (with the prime minister) and do it with spurs on.”

Fleshing out his proposal for a one-stop “omnibus” referendum, Mr Joyce said this could be held in conjunction with the next federal election, due in mid 2019. It could deal with the citizenship imbroglio in federal parliament, constitutional recognition for indigenous Australians and even the republic since it had been revived as an issue by Labor.

“You might have four or five things,” Mr Joyce said. “You can clear the deck of a whole range of constitutional changes and put them up at the next election. If Bill Shorten was a decent bloke, he would say, ‘OK, I reckon these are the things we need to clear up, so let’s go’.

“I … know what he will say. ‘So what about the republic?’ OK, mate, put that on the ballot paper as well.”