While Scott Morrison was in quarantine at The Lodge, locked in an urgent national cabinet meeting over the vaccine rollout, the Nationals were tearing themselves apart. Barnaby Joyce is now deputy prime minister-elect, winning a leadership spill he spent the weekend denying would happen.
Absurdly, Michael McCormack stood up in the prime minister’s chair at question time this afternoon, hours after getting rolled, with Joyce yet to been sworn in by the governor-general.
“Numbers haven’t been my friend today,” McCormack said.
But there’s been a sense of inevitability about McCormack’s demise, who became Nationals leader in 2018 after Joyce resigned under the cloud of sexual harassment allegations (allegations Joyce vehemently denies). Joyce challenged McCormack last year, but fell short. This time, a party room dissatisfied with McCormack’s failure to stand up to the Liberals fell behind the former leader.
Joyce’s return may be triumphant for him, but could cause discomfort to the Liberals. Firstly, those sexual harassment allegations remain unresolved. Anne Webster and Michelle Landry, both regional Coalition MPs, said female voters in the bush might be uncomfortable with Joyce’s return.
“I hope I come back a better person,” Joyce told media this afternoon.
As a backbencher, Joyce has repeatedly put himself at odds with the Coalition leadership. Last week he called for the Murugappan family — Tamil asylum seekers recently removed from detention on Christmas Island — to be allowed to stay in Australia.
“I know this is going to leave me offside with other people in my party,” he told Sunrise at the time.
His return has already given supporters of the family hope, and will undermine the Morrison government’s attempts to seek a short-term, politically-palatable solution to the issue.
In May, Joyce told Crikey he was uncomfortable with the Coalition’s big-spending, “Labor-lite” budget.
“I can’t change my position about debt when I’ve been speaking about debt my whole political career,” he said.
He’s advocated for the government to do more to prevent Julian Assange’s extradition.
But the biggest problem could be on climate. Any attempts by the Morrison government to make even a vague, tentative, pseudo-commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 could be vigorously opposed by Joyce.
His return has been backed by Nationals MPs who believe Michael McCormack, of all people, hasn’t done enough to defend coal.
The Nationals’ implosion has come at a shocking time for the government. They’re struggling with the vaccine rollout, and facing another hotel quarantine outbreak in NSW. News this morning that Morrison used his Cornwall trip to do a bit of ancestry.com won’t go down well with voters who might have to wait years to see family.
Less than a year out from an election, the Morrison government’s favoured narrative of stable, competent pandemic leadership has been attacked from within their own ranks.
Given climate change is going to affect farmers disproportionately, I don’t get the National’s desire to accelerate it. They should be the loudest voices against climate change!
Because the regional voters keep rewarding it even though the National Party keeps selling out the farmers in favour of the
fossil fuel companies. Loss of safe seats is the only way to shock a political party into drastic change.
Something tells me that whatever party could possibly challenge for National seats would not be any more any more inclined to help the farmers out this way. Only those inner city latte sippers seem to care about the future of agriculture, and even they are on the nose because they don’t want farmers to kill off the last of the koalas…
The average age of ‘farmers’ continues to increase – currently 52, twelve years above the national average for other occupations – while the political IQ apparently decreases.
Or so the electoral evidence shows – those gNats in seats which saw the full horror of the dying MBD and massive fish kills ALL returned them, with increased primary votes.
Yes its an interesting stat – “who will grow our food” is the only real question.
And of course the answer is cheap imported labor which everyone will complain about as they eat their fresh veggies….
Most think it’s a load of inner-city rubbish.
Trickier, as in it’s now more difficult for SQoMo to pretend to do something about climate change?
If you vote for The Nats because you think they represent farmers, take another look. They’ve been the party for mining and big ag for a very long time now.
It’s no coincidence that Gina handed Barnaby a giant novelty cheque. Also that they play pass the lump of coal with each other in parliament.
BJs ascension shows more than ever that the Nat’s are just the party of the fossil fuel lobby. He’s their man and will do his paid work to keep Australia’s miserable climate ambitions from ever growing.
The alternate universe that both the Nationals and the Liberals live in must be a fascinating place.
I come from the land originally, and live in a Sydney suburb considered “affluent”. I will still never understand anyone who votes for the LNP.
As if it is. They’ll remain in power for the next quarter of a billion years.