Schrodinger’s politician: Barnaby Joyce is precisely where he wants to be

4 hours ago 2

When Bob Katter threatened to punch a Nine News reporter in August for daring to question how his anti-immigrant rhetoric squared with his family’s Lebanese ancestry, he left no doubt as to his meaning.

“My only regret was I wasn’t more aggressive with him,” Katter said, even after he’d had several days to calm down from his bizarre threat. “Far from apologising, I should have just kept going. I’ll leave to your imagination what that means.”

Barnaby Joyce spent the day demanding the Nationals take an absolutism take on net zero and refusing to provide any clarity in return.

Barnaby Joyce, perhaps the politician closest in spirit to the 80-year-old Queenslander, seemed to be going down the same path on Monday.

Asked by the Australian Financial Review’s Phil Coorey whether he would reaffirm his loyalty to the Nationals if the party dropped its commitment for Australia to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 but retained some fallback climate plan, Joyce’s answer took a forceful turn.

“This is a case of aspiration and targets, Phil,” Joyce said. “[If I said] I have a target to punch you in the nose, but now I’ve just got an aspiration, would you feel more comfortable about that?”

“I’m not a violent man, that was a metaphor, not a promise,” he hastened to add.

That was Joyce all day, demanding no compromise from others but keeping his own position ambiguous.

Would he stay with the Nationals if the party bowed to his demands, Laura Jayes wanted to know on Sky News? Joyce couldn’t say. “Come and talk to me then, Laura,” he said.

Her colleague, Andrew Clennell, tried to get an answer on whether Joyce was effectively still a Nationals MP. “You can’t be half pregnant,” Clennell pleaded.

“I can’t be pregnant at all Andrew, because I’m a bloke,” Joyce parried, his stance becoming no clearer.

The former deputy prime minister and two-time Nationals leader has become Schrodinger’s politician.

He’s in the Nationals, but not attending party meetings. He’s in question time, still sitting with the Nationals, but zoned out somewhere else on his smartphone. He’s doing chummy joint media interviews with Pauline Hanson, but not formally in One Nation.

“I’m Barnaby Joyce and I’m very proud,” he told Jayes on Monday morning. Of that, there can be no doubt.

Were Joyce’s party loyalty to become as clear as his self-belief – strong enough to survive his public infidelity, incoherent rant sprawled on a Canberra footpath and determination to destroy a net zero policy he signed the Nationals up to – what need would there be to write about him?

That is the position Katter inhabits, newsworthy more for his outbursts than his screwball policy ideas.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen quipped in question time on Monday that Joyce was doing the Nationals the “greatest service he’s ever given them” by leaving.

With populists like Nigel Farage on the march around the world, it is a quip Bowen may live to regret.

But Joyce, who is as wily and dogged a politician as any in parliament when he’s on the attack, will not do the Nationals leader he hates, David Littleproud, that favour any sooner than he has to.

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