Mark Riley: Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Giles bound together by their existential grappling

Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Giles have little in common.

Except one thing.

They are both men who find themselves in very public struggles with their political personas.

And they are both facing the same existential question: are they really in the right place?

For Giles, the question is whether he is in the right place within the Government’s political structure.

For Joyce, the question is much larger: is his place really in politics at all?

The Opposition is calling for Giles to be sacked from the immigration portfolio for incompetence.

It is what oppositions do when they have ministers on the ropes.

But Giles is not incompetent. He is just exceedingly uncomfortable.

He is smart, hard-working and one of the most liked members of the Albanese ministry.

But he is also looking increasingly like a square peg in a round hole.

His history tells us why.

Giles’s politics were forged in the political maelstrom of the Tampa affair.

As a young lawyer, he helped represent the 433 Hazara asylum seekers rescued by MV Tampa when their fishing boat, Palapa, foundered in international waters north of Christmas Island in 2001.

The subsequent birth of the Pacific solution and the beginning of a decades-long pitched battle over refugee policy propelled him into a career in representative politics.

In 2015, he led a left-wing revolt at Labor’s national conference against then-leader Bill Shorten’s campaign for Labor to embrace the Coalition’s boat turnback policy.

Giles lost the vote, but not before attracting the powerful backing of left luminaries such as Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese.

He has since acquiesced to the party line, accepting the political reality of Labor’s position.

Giles says his position has evolved over the years, but surely the essential beliefs ignited in the fury of the Tampa crisis still burn deeply in his belly.

And that is no doubt why he looks so uncomfortable defending the Government’s actions now in overseeing the release of 149 criminal asylum seekers after the High Court ruled their indefinite detention illegal.

Many of the Tampa asylum seekers ended up in New Zealand.

But our trans-Tasman friends aren’t interested in taking this cohort. Neither is Canada, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh.

This week’s dump of department information revealed that all those countries were approached to resettle the former detainees. All said no.

Only the US is still considering the proposition.

In the meantime, Giles — the progressive socialist with a background as a refugee advocate — is left to convince the Australian public that he will enforce the toughest possible restrictions on the released detainees, 24 of whom have already committed new crimes.

And, if another Palapa were to appear on Australia’s horizon today, Giles would be compelled to turn them around from whence they came.

That is why he looks so uncomfortable.

Some of his colleagues say it is not that he is a bad minister, but a good-hearted politician in the wrong ministry.

Barnaby Joyce’s situation is similar but different.

I’ve had a couple of long conversations with him since he was filmed lying on his back on the footpath yelling obscenities down his phone in Canberra’s entertainment district.

He is embarrassed, chastened and wanting to move on. But politics has scant regard for sentiment and won’t allow him to do that easily.

His colourful, often chaotic history of personal scandal means the public’s well of goodwill for him is running low.

And so is his party’s.

Barnaby Joyce is on some pretty serious medication. He knows it shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol.

But, in his words, he let his guard down last week after receiving some deeply affecting family news.

He told his colleagues at the weekend that he was going to take some time off to deal with his personal issues and contemplate his future.

Within 24 hours, he surprised them by reappearing in Parliament.

His party leader, David Littleproud, and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton are urging him to take that time off.

He should.

Like Andrew Giles, but for different reasons, he should consider whether he is in the right place.