‘So what if he fell off a pot plant?’: Barnaby Joyce’s voters face a choice

5 days ago 2

There are two articles of faith you will commonly hear in New England on the NSW Northern Tablelands. One is fealty to the National Party, the other is affection for federal MP Barnaby Joyce.

Just as he has on the national stage, Joyce has a big presence in Tamworth, the town where he was born and which remains the largest centre of the seat he has represented since 2013.

With Joyce announcing on October 18 that he would not run again for the Nationals – and suggesting that he might jump ship to One Nation because of a personality clash with leader David Littleproud and antipathy towards net zero – the voters of New England might soon have to make an uncomfortable choice. Those who spoke with this masthead as the story played out from Canberra voiced little surprise that their MP was once again at the heart of a controversy.

“I mean sometimes it probably gets a bit out of hand,” says farmer Max Ireland, pausing in the middle of a day’s work with his daughter Yolanda Mooney to speak with us. “But he speaks his mind, he speaks common sense.”

Ireland likes the way Joyce is not shy to attract attention to the issues he believes in, and he thinks he is right to demand his party abandons net zero targets.

“Well, I think the way they go about [reducing emissions] is a huge waste of money, and I think climate change is just being overestimated,” Ireland says.

Max Ireland, pictured with his daughter Yolanda Mooney, stands by Barnaby Joyce but might stick with the Nationals.

The Nationals are reviewing the party’s commitment to net zero, which Joyce signed up to as leader in 2021, though he now wants the emissions reduction plan to be scrapped immediately.

That said, loyalty runs deep around here and Ireland believes he might stick with the Nationals if Joyce were to one day run again for One Nation.

“I think you are better sticking with a major party,” he says.

Others will stick with Joyce. One Tamworth solicitor, who asked not to be named, says Joyce’s brand is bigger than the Nationals, and many voters would follow Joyce to another political home.

“Well, perhaps not Labor,” he adds with a huge laugh, though it is not clear whether it is the thought of a local voting for Labor or Joyce running for Labor that has tickled him.

Steven Coxhead, who was the Nationals’ Tamworth branch chairman before he defected to One Nation along with a fistful of other National Party members earlier this month, says Joyce’s enduring popularity in New England is beyond the understanding of observers from the nation’s major cities.

What might be seen as erratic behaviour in Sydney or Melbourne is viewed around New England, at least in Coxhead’s view, as refreshingly human.

“I’ve got a mate I went through school with, and he is this card-carrying greeny, and I said to him, ‘You know how I can tell Barnaby is doing a good job? Lefties like you are losing their shit’,” he says when asked to explain how Joyce’s sometimes combative brand of politics is received locally.

Former Tamworth Nationals brach chairman Steven Coxhead believes Joyce is right in his decision not to run for the Nationals again.

Without prompting Coxhead launches into another infamous example of Joyce’s headline-grabbing behaviour.

“Okay, he had a couple of drinks, and he lost his balance and fell off a pot plant when he was on the phone … but
his popularity in the New England didn’t go down, because it goes to show he’s a man, not a robot,” he says of an incident last year when Joyce was photographed sprawled on a pavement in Canberra muttering obscenities.

“God help anybody who doesn’t want to have a drink.”

Walcha farmer Warrick Fletcher, who has been advancing the case for renewable energy development in New England, is less forgiving. He suspects Joyce’s opposition to net zero has as much to do with his close ties to leading fossil fuel figures, such as mining magnate Gina Reinhart, as it does with defending local interests.

Coxhead couldn’t disagree more. Some stances are worth taking, he says. The NSW Nationals have voted to abandon the net zero by 2050 target, and as far as he sees it, Joyce is right to stand with the party’s membership rather than its federal leadership.

“Well, everybody wants their pound of flesh, but how much flesh are you willing to cut off? How much of yourself are you willing to sell out to gain power? There’s got to be a line,” he says.