EDITORIAL: Self-serving Joyce has always been a ‘free agent’

Don’t believe for a moment that it is Barnaby Joyce’s strident opposition to net zero that is driving him out of the Nationals and into the arms of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

It’s not.

Like every single step Mr Joyce has made in his political career since he entered Parliament as a senator for Queensland 20 years ago, this move is motivated overwhelmingly by his own self-interest.

This is who he is; who he has shown himself to be over and over again, from his floor-crossing days within the Howard government to today.

He is not a team player. He is a self-aggrandising, self-obsessed egotist.

After announcing he wouldn’t re-contest his seat of New England for the Nationals at the next election, Mr Joyce last week declared himself a “free agent”.

When has he not been? He has always done exactly as he pleased, damn the consequences for anyone else — even for those on his own side.

Despite acting to destabilise and undermine his party, Mr Joyce remains a member of the Nationals.

Why? Because that’s what suits him best.

For now. He’s not quite ready to leave the safety of the Nationals brand and the advantages it confers him.

When he intuits that calculus has changed, he won’t hesitate to jump ship and abandon the party that has given him everything, including two turns as deputy prime minister. Loyalty isn’t a word in Mr Joyce’s vocabulary.

Who benefits from Mr Joyce’s party shopping? Certainly not the people of New England, who voted in a Nationals member not even six months ago.

Not his supposed cause either.

There is a valid conversation to be had as to how Australia should best handle its energy transition in a way that serves both the environment and the economy.

But this isn’t the way to do it.

Mr Joyce has long been regarded as one of Australia’s best retail politicians; a gifted communicator and a conservative with mainstream cut-through.

That has changed.

Mr Joyce’s name has become poison to a great proportion of Australians, particularly those in the urban areas the Coalition desperately needs to win back to have any hope of governing in the next decade.

Even those voters who might be sympathetic to arguments against retaining net zero are liable to be sceptical if they’re coming out of Mr Joyce’s mouth.

It would be unfair to say that self-interest is Mr Joyce’s sole motivation for his potential defection.

There’s also spite.

He hasn’t forgiven the Nationals for the injury to his ego caused by his latest relegation to the backbench in service of “generational change”. So deep is his hatred of party leader David Littleproud that he would demean himself further by joining One Nation’s band of misfits and misanthropes.

It shows a comical lack of self-awareness. Mr Littleproud isn’t to blame for Mr Joyce’s diminished relevance. On that, he only has himself to blame.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.