Barnaby Joyce quits Nationals to sit on crossbench

Barnaby Joyce has always been more than a politician. He’s a force of nature.

Today, Barnaby formally resigned from the Nationals, the party he once led with a mix of charm and chaos. He’s indicated he’ll sit on the crossbench and won’t run for New England at the next election.

That would be a mistake.

Reports indicate that Barnaby is considering running for a Senate seat with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

I think he needs to stand up as a One Nation representative for New England.

Alexandra Marshall had this to say in the Unfiltered newsletter:

‘My concern was Barnaby’s welfare,’ muttered Peter Dutton, in response to Barnaby Joyce’s claim that he asked the Nationals MP to quit. Twice.

As expected, today was the day Barnaby finally had enough of the factional games being played inside conservative politics. After a steak dinner with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, he announced his defection to the crossbench as an independent. Most suspect that he will hang around in no-man’s land for a while and see if the Nationals make him a frontbench offer. If not, it’ll be over to One Nation and – probably – onwards to a Senate seat.

‘I haven’t made that decision … I don’t know. Walking away in part from the party in Canberra is easy. Walking away from the membership is very, very, very hard. It’s just quite obvious, when they talk about generational change, that’s code for “get out of here”.’

He has expressed this sentiment on many occasions and yet the party has been quite happy to leave one of their most effective fundraisers in the wilderness.

There has also been some disappointing commentary from Senator Matt Canavan, who has perhaps also forgotten that many of his supporters moonlight as One Nation voters. ‘One Nation are good at stunts in the Senate, but they’re not so crash hot at winning votes in Parliament.’ True, but that is in large part thanks to the major parties stitching up democracy with preference voting – entrenching the powerful grip of the two-party system. Still, Mr Canavan says he has not ‘given up hope that we can convince him to return’. And he might be right – but it is doubtful that Mr Joyce would return for anything less than Nationals Leader.

Michael de Percy has the full story.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Barnaby Joyce quits Nationals to sit on crossbench,