(Image: Private Media)

If the Turnbull era is now mostly forgotten in Canberra — as if a government could ever actually attempt to do serious policy! — there are some lessons on offer from Turnbull’s prime ministership of relevance to the shoddy, corrupt outfit that succeeded him.

One is that Barnaby Joyce is a drag on the Coalition’s vote. A noticeable one.

The Turnbull government had a rough time from the 2016 election onward — having just fallen over the line with a tiny majority, it limped into 2017 and then, from mid-year, faced the rolling instability of the parliamentary eligibility crisis. The highest profile victim was Joyce, who — in a characteristic display of poor judgment — had mocked members of other parties ousted for being foreign citizens before being found to be one himself.

Then came the scandal around Joyce’s affair with a staffer in early 2018, followed by revelations of allegations of sexual harassment against Joyce — allegations Joyce denies, and that to this day have not been properly tested. Amid open brawling with Turnbull, Joyce was forced out.

Thereafter, the Coalition’s fortunes turned around. Newspoll shows that, from a nadir of 36% in February 2018, the government’s primary vote began recovering steadily, reaching 39% by May 2018, its highest level since the early days of Turnbull’s prime ministership. The 2PP vote — which had hovered around a six-point deficit for the government throughout 2017 and early 2018, shrunk to just two points after Joyce was banished to the backbench.

By coincidence, Labor’s 2PP lead in Newspoll has returned to six points in the wake of Joyce’s return to the deputy prime ministership, after being 50-50 in the last poll before he seized the leadership of the Nationals.

In Joyce’s only federal election as leader, the Nationals went backwards in his home state of NSW, while the LNP, the base of Joyce’s party support, suffered a 2.5% swing against it. Only in Victoria did the Nats lift their vote in the lower house — off the back of a strong swing in Gippsland to Darren Chester, the Nationals’ best talent and a man whose decency Joyce would have to die and get born again to come near.

For journalists who like the colour and movement of Joyce, who still think he is “the best retail politician in Australia”, and who are content to overlook the sexual harassment allegations, the reality of Joyce’s electoral impact is quietly overlooked.

The most effective political imagery confirms voters’ worldview and attitudes, rather than contradicting them. And Joyce confirms all of the current negative impressions of the Morrison government — that it is corrupt and rips off taxpayers, that it has a 1950s attitude to women and can’t figure out what the problem is with sexual predators and sexual harassment, and that it is only focused on being in power, not on delivering anything of substance.

Add to that the fact that under Joyce, the Nationals represent not farmers or regional communities but their fossil fuel donors. The federal Nationals, for example, have received over $140,000 from Santos since 2014; the company has also handed tens of thousands of dollars to the Queensland LNP and NSW Nationals.

The working assumption of political journalists early this year was that Scott Morrison would stroll to victory, most likely at an election in October, off the back of a successful vaccination rollout. On current form, Sydney won’t even be out of lockdown by that putative election date — a lockdown partly caused by Morrison’s shambolic rollout and his failures, and that of state governments, on quarantine. Now the idea is voters will forget the shambles and the lockdowns by the time an election is actually held next year.

But the longer we go before the next election, the more opportunity Joyce will have to confirm every negative impression voters have of a sordid and incompetent government.