What’s the point of Barnaby Joyce?
Returned to his National Party’s leadership ostensibly because of his purported skills as Australia’s best retail politician, it turns out he can’t sell ice in a desert. So what is the point of his leadership and, through it, the point of his party?
The Nationals now hold the whip hand on how Australia will join the world tackling the challenge of climate change. But the best they can do is resort to their traditional politics of fear to extract budgetary concessions for the communities they have represented poorly.
The politics of climate change is, understandably, wrapped in emotion. What reasonable person wouldn’t fear the consequences of a planet slowly simmering towards conditions that render more and more of it unliveable? And the best Joyce can do is complain of missing precision in how setting a target to lower carbon emissions might work while imprecisely demanding the pork-barrel rolls through his electorates to fund unknown levels of compensation for undefined harms.
Somewhere there is a strong and logical case to be made for compensating those whose assets and livelihoods will be hurt by the economic adjustments needed if Australia is to join the world in setting net zero targets. It’s clear that thermal coal will decline over the next 30 years as an export and a source of employment in some parts of regional Australia. Equally, it’s clear that industries reliant on high energy will reduce in scale.
But listen to Joyce and you could believe that’s going to happen next week, a shutdown faster than the overnight closure of metropolitan Australia when COVID first emerged as a threat.
Joyce and the Nationals are right to want a plan on how the climate transition will happen, what the new jobs look like, how regional economies will reshape without coal. But there’s an important fact to remember. They are part of the government. In fact they have been part of the government for 48 of the past 70 years, the period that has seen the people they represent decline in electoral importance and the towns and cities they live in largely decline.
What is the point of the Nationals as representatives of regional Australia if it is going backwards?
On their watch, we have not created one substantial city between the Great Dividing Range and the Indian Ocean in the past 70 years. Our agricultural exports have diminished and are largely captive to the prices international customers (who are signing on to net zero emissions) are willing to pay.
People in regional Australia are noisily but not ably represented by the Nationals. Few are likely to be born there because their maternity wards have closed. Yes, they can go to school but mainly they leave to go to university and seek professional success because the Nationals in government have never delivered decentralisation.
If they stay, life can be good — less commuting, less pollution and lower house prices. But there are downsides. For whatever reason, they are one and a half times as likely as metropolitan Australians to smoke cigarettes and consume excessive amounts of alcohol. And that fuels a higher likelihood of obesity with the associated health risks.
While Joyce and the Nats are vocal on the downsides to their people of managing the climate change risk, they are ineffective in dealing with the more fundamental issues of regional Australia.
What does a solution look like to retailer Joyce and his fellow shopwalkers? It appears to include a grab bag of dams where they aren’t viable (and Australia has a great record of regional development through dam building i.e. the Ord River scheme), a coal-fired power station in north Queensland and, presumably, lots of handouts to line the pockets of those who won’t or can’t adapt to a changing world.
The notion of retail politics is hardly new. Successful politicians always had the ability to sell ideas. And that doesn’t just mean acting with self interest to take the easy road. It means using the “bully pulpit” to educate their constituents and ease their journey through difficult periods.
The Nats have a record of trading in fear but sometimes they step up. In living memory, we have the examples of the party finding a way to negotiate concessions that allowed it to support gun laws and native title.
Right now, under the leadership of Joyce and his narrow set of skills, the party is shaping as not being able to step up on climate change which will affect regional Australia more than just about any settled part of the world.
So what is the point of Joyce? Does he really have these retail skills? Or leadership? Or is he just blessed with a memorable name and a lot of bluster?
Its curious that the electorate of New England that elected one of Australia’s most honest and respected politicians, Tony Windsor will re-Joyce at the next election. There is really no rhyme or reason apart from an absence of another quality candidate who could combat Joyce’s brand and because some of the electorate sees Joyce as a maverick that sticks it too the city elites in the Liberal Party.
People just do not follow national politics out here and don’t really care about the national interest as a reason to vote against him. Its all about an identity as Buckle Bunnies and RM Williams apparel and car seat covers, and Utes with Bundy stickers. However there is some dissent I know a few farmers, smart ones who think about their business who detest Joyce and the Nationals as they can see nothing he’s done and will do nothing that would be of much help to them or their families future.
Very astute Madonna. But you failed to mention the effects of drought on regional Australia and how climate has affected that. Also of devestations of bushfires along with how climate has affected that.
Yet this masquerading monkey in Joyce is out there with his fellow believers singing kumbayah on god knows what drugs, as they definetly cannot be that stupid.
But i guess since this L/NP has been in power anything is possible as most borders on dirty dealings, corruption, imorral deceit and lies have been crossed!
Well, he’s good for generating click for our awful media. In turn that will allow him to keep getting those votes.
First time King hit?
And he’s only been there – an appendage of King’s indulged Limited News Party, a major prop in Coalition’s hold on power – for how many years now?
Following on from last weeks “Morrison is up against not one but four Labor leaders. Who’ll come out on top” rally call.
There’s no doubt Cousin Jethro and his band of loose end cannons will play a big part in Morrison “winning the next election” if they do….. Will King pay out on him then?
He’s like a piece of art. There doesn’t need to be a point. It should be controversial enough to start a conversation as we look on with a glass of champers and some cheese and biscuits in hand.
Cheese and biscuits? I was thinking of something more ballistic.