The last chance dance for Barnaby Joyce

To use one of Barnaby Joyce’s own garbled images, he is hanging on to his Nationals leadership by “the skin of his teeth” after staring down a party revolt and winning a temporary reprieve.

But Joyce’s goose will still be cooked if there are any more damaging revelations of misbehaviour or showing misuse of public funds through government jobs and travel allowance.

While the plans within the National Party to force the Deputy Prime Minister to resign were dampened because Nationals did not want to act under pressure or interference from Labor, the media or the Liberals, they are not extinguished.

Even Joyce’s allies concede he’s got a slim, last chance and any new damage to the Nationals and the Coalition will not be tolerated.

There are plenty of MPs who genuinely believe the best course personally for Joyce would be to go to the backbench, restore order in his life and have the chance of reviving his career.

But at the same time, there is deep concern that Joyce has caused irredeemable reputational damage to the Nationals and the Coalition that has stalled the government’s political momentum and guarantees Malcolm Turnbull will be Liberal leader for 30 “losing” Newspolls.

This is the collateral damage to the Prime Minister and Liberals that is infuriating Liberal ministers and MPs who simply want Joyce to resign and go to the back backbench.

For Turnbull, who understandably continues to distance himself from the troublesome facts and decisions of the case, there is the unavoidable contradiction that he is painted as being weak for not getting rid of Joyce while not having the power to do so.

Labor intends to stretch out the saga for every possible day in parliament this week, next week when Joyce is acting prime minister and the following week in a forensic search through travel records in the Senate estimates committee.

Labor’s attack yesterday lacked the intensity of previous days as the realisation that the Nationals’ revolt was over sank in, but it was still another lost day in parliament for the Coalition.

The government fought back with procedural points in question time as Labor fenced and probed with technical tricks which the calm and even-handed Speaker, Tony Smith, felt compelled to describe as being “too cute”.

While Smith actually forced a ranting Joyce to sit down mid-question, government MPs cheered and clapped as one of Labor’s tricks worked and Nationals backbencher, Ken O’Dowd, who had said he’d put his hand up for leadership if Joyce was dumped, joked his way through an answer.

It was a measure of the fraught nerves on the Coalition benches that they felt relief at such gallows humour and were oblivious to the fact that it was another lost opportunity on the way to more depressing polls.

If the parliament is seen as a joke or a farce, it’s the government that suffers, no matter how childish the opposition’s tactics.