There are two Barnaby Joyces in this election.
In the cities, there’s Barnaby the pantomime villain, the coal-loving rural hick, single-handedly holding the Morrison government to ransom on climate change, and driving some moderate Liberal voters into the arms of the independents.
But in the bush, there’s Barnaby the retail politician, roaming around the country handing out millions for classic Nationals’ boondoggles.
With the independent challenge to once-safe Liberal seats firming as one of the big stories of the campaign, it’s the first Barnaby getting all the media attention. Bush Barnaby, on the other hand, has largely flown under the radar.
Last week there were just two journalists — neither from one of the big media organisations — on the “Wombat Trail”, as the Nationals campaign is colloquially known. The lack of focus on the Nationals means Joyce is free to do what he loves best: dole out big bucks for the bush.
Take the recently announced $80 million water pipeline for Bowen, in the north Queensland Nationals seat of Dawson. The business case isn’t yet complete. It’s a similar story with numerous other regional infrastructure projects backed in by the Nats, including the $5.4 billion Hells Gates Dam project in regional Queensland announced before the budget.
Of course the real backstory here is that many of these big, shoddy infrastructure projects are the price of buying the Nationals’ support for a net zero emissions target, which Joyce was returned to the leadership to fight against.
Analysis of the last federal budget from the Financial Review suggests it cost up to $34 billion to get the Nats on board. With fewer eyeballs on Joyce’s campaign, it’s harder for voters across the country to really connect those dots.
And with nearly all journalists on the road travelling with either Morrison or Anthony Albanese (who’s apparently bored them into resorting to gotchas), there’s also little scrutiny on one of the main sources of tension within the government’s campaign.
As we’ve written before, there are several Coalition election campaigns happening in parallel. Morrison is running his “suburban strategy”, trying to offset projected losses in places like Parramatta. Moderates are essentially fighting a series of tough byelections on their own.
Joyce is in charge of shoring up the regions, particularly coal country, where the flip-side of the government’s both-ways bet on net zero is intended to resonate. While campaigning with Matt Canavan last week, who recently declared net zero “dead”, the deputy prime minister evaded questions on whether he’d urged colleagues to tone down criticism of the emissions reduction plan.
A greater focus on the Wombat Trail would mean more probing of the Nationals’ incredible stranglehold on the direction of climate policy, and a better understanding of what’s actually worrying regional voters.
It might also make the party’s very smooth ride through this election a little rockier. Putting aside the broader fate of the Morrison government, most signs are pointing to a status quo election result for the Nats.
Such was the size of the 2019 anti-Shorten swing that the party has a huge buffer in its regional Queensland seats. Labor’s best chance is in Flynn, but even there, an 8.7% margin might be too much.
The party could face an interesting three-way challenge in the safe seat of Nicholls, where local member Damian Drum is retiring, and Joyce is more unpopular. And Resources Minister Keith Pitt faces a long-shot challenge from independent Bundaberg Mayor Jack Dempsey in the seat of Hinkler.
On the offensive front, the party is pushing to gain Hunter in NSW coal country, while Joyce has also campaigned for the Country Liberals’ Damien Ryan, who’s hoping to spring an upset in the vast Northern Territory seat of Lingiari.
But at this stage, there’s a good chance the Nationals will finish up exactly where they started. That means their future as influential junior Coalition partner, and all that promised spending, lies in the hands of Liberal candidates in other parts of the country.
But many of those Liberals are finding that even the faintest whiff of Barnaby is enough to ward off voters.
3-5% of the national vote and the Nationals hold 100% of the country to ransom on everything. The Greens have two to four times the national vote and can’t get anything done. We really need proportional representation, don’t we? What a joke so-called democracy is.
Give it a few years and the greens should be able to build a heartland around inner city lefties. And the migration away from regions to cities will eventually leave the Nats with a smaller and smaller base.
Well, Kishor, if you genuinely believe what you’ve written in this article, it sounds to me like you’ve written your ‘to do’ list for the time remaining before the election. Follow the Wombat Trail yourself and expose the bastards at every turn. Better yet, have the whole Crikey team follow it. In Crikey, you have one of the few national journalism platforms that will publish an unbiased account of events. You really can make a difference.
It isn’t just Australia’s future that is up for grabs at this election. The return of a Liberal fossil fuel quisling government to Canberra, in the country that is one of the world’s largest sources and promoters of fossil fuel extraction and use, will have disastrous consequences for the whole planet. The International Renewable Energy Agency recently released a report on the level and types of changes that need to be implemented between now and 2030 to keep us within the 1.5C warming limit:
https://www.irena.org/publications/2022/Mar/World-Energy-Transitions-Outlook-2022.
It identifies a daunting degree of change, but one that is still possible to achieve. However, the current election is a make-or-break inflexion point. One more term of a climate-denialist Liberal/National government will move the situation entirely into the ‘impossible’ basket.
My sense is that, if the Liberals and Nationals do get up at this election, it will be because of success in the bush. That outcome would be tragic for us all.
This is your chance to be a true hero.
Always a huge mystery to me why the bush is rusted on to a party that actively works against its best interests.
Lack of critical thinking. I have family in the bush and the more informed have not voted Nata for that very reason – but there are too many doing ‘what we always do’.
I doubt that is only a “bush” characteristic.
How many crops can you grow in an open cut mine! The lower levels of life expectancy in places like the Hunter are due almost entirely to the effects of air pollution from open cut mining!
Much of Hunter is in suburban Newcastle. It has very similar working demographics to the electorate up the road- Shortland – ie, health, education, social services. There is very little “bush” about it.
As Bernard Keane pointed out in another article, all grants are supposed to be managed under a strict governance regime spelt out in the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act. If we get a Labor minority govt with independents holding the balance of power, how many of the National Party projects are going to pass the governance standards that a balanced Parliament needs to apply/
Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve ended up with appalling governments or politicians who hold the BoP courtesy of the regional and rural Australia.