Barnaby Joyce digs a deep coal hole for Coalition partners

Barnaby Joyce has re-emerged as the voice of the National Party. Picture: Andy Rogers

Barnaby Joyce has re-emerged, claiming to be the authentic voice of the National Party.

He has defied Scott Morrison on coal, repudiated the Liberals on climate change and fractured Coalition unity ahead of the NSW and federal elections.

Two extraordinary events happened yesterday. Morrison virtually admitted the Liberals have lost the politics of coal by ruling out government support for new coal power in Queensland. This followed Joyce’s demand on behalf of the Nationals for a government election policy backing such a coal plant.

Joyce’s statements yesterday are alarming for the government because he is promoting the interests of the Nationals against the interests of the Liberals. The conservative side of politics is being torn apart because its core constituencies cannot be reconciled on coal and climate change.

The division is lethal because it is public and beyond healing. The schism is between Queensland’s pro-coal developmental ethos and the anti-coal renewables-loving wealthy Liberal seats in Sydney and Melbourne.

It was highlighted yesterday in the dramatic Morrison-Joyce split over coal. Within the National Party Joyce has put leader Michael McCormack on notice. While McCormack and the Coalition can be expected to survive for the election, this political earthquake will resound long after the May poll.

Joyce spoke yesterday with naked audacity, saying he wouldn’t throw “our people under a bus to look after Melbourne”. Joyce can say this because he has no cabinet constraints and no ministerial obligation to the Coalition agreement.

Disunity is a triple curse on this government. It plagues the Liberal Party, the National Party and the idea of a viable coalition. These tensions run deep because they mirror core differences over economic interests and political culture, captured between the central Queensland/Melbourne divide. The lesson, yet again, is that Queensland is different.

Just as Queenslanders drove the challenge to Malcolm Turnbull, they now drive the threat to the Coalition and to McCormack. The conservative crisis arises because Australia has changed. It is trapped between coal, the nation’s greatest export, and the coal-loathing middle class from the leafy suburbs of the southern capitals.

Consider Morrison’s unresolvable dilemma — he must appeal to the progressive climate change Liberals in the Sydney and Melbourne suburbs, yet he must also appeal to the Queensland populist Right vote leaking badly to One Nation and driving the Nationals to their self-interested crusade. The Nationals, or at least Barnaby Joyce and his backers, have decided to promote their own interests, aware this is undermining the government.