‘I want him on board’: Hanson invites Joyce for home-cooked dinner

3 months ago 23

Pauline Hanson has invited Barnaby Joyce to have a home-cooked meal with her as she uses One Nation’s soaring poll numbers to persuade the Nationals MP to join her ranks, despite the Coalition signing up to his opposition to net zero.

This masthead revealed last month that Joyce was considering leaving the party he has led twice to move to One Nation in what the northern NSW MP billed as a revolt over net zero and disagreements with Nationals leader David Littleproud.

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, who is being actively courted by Pauline Hanson.

Despite the Nationals and Liberals both abandoning net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as a target, which Joyce fervently campaigned against, he has not committed to staying with the Coalition.

Hanson said she would be in Canberra next week for parliament and planned to meet with Joyce. “I intend to cook him dinner and have a good talk, good chat with him,” she told ABC Radio National on Tuesday morning.

“I’m going to have a good talk with him about whether these prospects will be better with One Nation, because with the National Party [polling] on about 4 to 5 per cent at the moment, I think 18 per cent looks a lot more healthy to him.”

Hanson did not attend parliament during the sitting fortnight after this masthead reported Joyce’s potential defection, instead travelling to the US, where she stayed at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort and spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Joyce told this masthead he had not received an invitation from Hanson, but was happy to meet her, saying: “I’ve got no problems going to dinner with people.”

The New England MP said that One Nation’s polling – which has surged to a record 18 per cent in recent Australian Financial Review/Redbridge/Accent Research polls – was less important to him than party principles.

“I’ve won back a couple of seats already, in the Senate and the House. I’m not scared of a challenge, it’s not so much where the polling is, it’s where the philosophy is,” Joyce said.

“On the net zero issue [One Nation] were the first party out, their concerns about the Paris Agreement: a lot of times they have a purer form of understandable conservatism. It might be binary at times, but people clearly understand it.”

Joyce would not be drawn extensively on One Nation’s immigration platform, as Opposition Leader Sussan Ley points her party in the policy area’s direction following a settling of energy policies.

“Unless you bring in the infrastructure you can’t bring in the people, that’s very unfair for Australians already here,” Joyce said.

Hanson said she had not held further conversations with Joyce on his defection in recent weeks, citing her visit to the United States and the racial vilification suit brought against her by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi as extenuating circumstances.

“Of course I want him on board. I won’t deny that. I think members of parliament or people with the vested interests of this country at heart, like Barnaby has, of course, I want to work with those people,” Hanson said.

In this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor, Hanson’s net likeability rose 21 points in the last year, from -13 to 8 per cent. Joyce’s figures rose by 14 points, from -22 to -8 per cent.

Joyce would not provide a timeline on any possible defection, but said a long-term relegation to the opposition’s backbench was playing into his decision-making.

Former Nationals Leader Michael McCormack said he was not concerned by Hanson and Joyce’s meal plans, but said the Coalition’s decision to scrap net zero offered an opportunity for Joyce to come back into the tent.

“Everything he wanted has been achieved,” McCormack said. “And he played a part in that, no question.”

He said Joyce owed loyalty to the party that had twice made him deputy prime minister, despite his personal disagreements with Littleproud. Joyce, McCormack said, should “go home from the dance with the person who brought you.”

Joyce said his ties to the National Party had “pretty much broken down” after Littleproud enacted a rule to effectively hide the MP, who is unpopular in urban electorates, during the May election campaign, and following a claim from a female Nationals staffer that he shouted at her last month.

“None of these things seem conducive to an effective relationship, which you need to do an effective job,” Joyce said. He has previously denied the allegations.

Littleproud was contacted for comment.