Already and this is this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the twenty eighth of November. I'm Sam Kazlowski.
I'm Billy fitz Simon's.
Late yesterday, former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce stood up in the House of Representatives and announced he is leaving his current political party, the Nationals, after thirty years of membership. It comes after months of speculation about a move and could have major implications for the strength of the current coalition opposition and the longer term success of the Nationals
in some really key regional parts of Australia. On today's podcast, we're going to break down who Barnaby Joyce is, why he's made this announcement, and what it could all mean for the balance of power in Canberra on the last sitting day of the year.
Sam Barnaby Joyce, I think is a very recognizable name in Australian politics. He has been around politics for a very long time. But for anyone who isn't familiar with him, what do we need to know about him?
So Barnaby Joyce has been the MP for New England, which is a seat in the lower House in northern New South Wales since twenty thirteen. Before that, he was a Senator for Queensland, and in twenty sixteen he became the leader of the National Party and he also became Deputy Prime Minister under Malcolm Turnbull. So he had that job until twenty eighteen when he stepped down after a personal relationship with his former staffer became public.
If anyone's heard of the Bonk Ban, I'm saying that in quotation marks in Canberra. It came about in twenty eighteen after this relationship that he had with his former staffer came to light, and it is a band that still stands that politicians cannot have intimate relationships with their staffers.
Yeah, and I think from that point in twenty eighteen he really has taken kind of a back seat and quite literally been on the back bench of his party, partly because of all of the personal dramas that have surrounded his political career. So he hasn't really had a senior role in any of the kind of key portfolios over the last couple of years, but nonetheless is a very influential figure of Australian politics and particularly of conservative politics in this country.
And so throughout his whole time in politics up until now, he has been part of the National Party. If anyone's just getting across the National Party, give us some very quick context. What actually is the National Party.
So they're the party that represents the interests of rural and regional Australians. Federally, they have this formal alliance with the Liberal Party and together they're called the Coalition. There's actually three parties in the coalition because there's the Liberal National Party of Queensland. But at a top line, the
coalition is the Liberals and the Nationals. So when the Coalition wins government like they did under you know, Malcolm Turbule or Scott Morrison, the Nationals leader usually becomes the Deputy prime Minister as part of that coalition agreement. And so right now the Nationals are led by David little Proud, who you're sitting down with next week, and Joyce leaving Little Proud's party is a really big deal because he isn't just a backbencher, he is a former leader. He's
a former Deputy Prime minister. So it's a big loss to the party. Identity, but it does also strengthen the numbers and political pool of whatever party he chooses to join. And all signs indicate that he is set to join One Nation, which is kind of a competitor in that rural and regional interests category to the Nationals.
He doesn't definitely need to join another party, though he could sit as an independent.
Definitely he can remain as an independent. And you know, so he got up yesterday and he made a short statement announcing he would be leaving the Nationals. He didn't go as far as confirming he would join One Nation in that speech, which we were all expecting. To be honest, there was so much speculation. There was a photo released earlier this week of him and the leader of One Nation, Pauline Hanson, having dinner together. We'll get to the menu
of that dinner in a minute. But then he walked out of the chamber and within thirty seconds was at a press conference that he held in the gardens outside, and he expanded on why he was leaving. Still no official confirmation that he would be joining One Nation. We're expecting that announcement soon. And at the core of why he was leaving, I think was twofold. From one perspective, I think it was the fact that he has been
kind of relegated to the backbench. He said he hasn't had any kind of speaking opportunities in Parliament in the last eighteen months. He's clearly feeling a bit neglected by
his party. But also he talked a lot about the failures that he perceives from his party in representing the regional Australians and he said that the Coalition as a whole is spending too much time focusing on how to win back Teal seats, so seats currently held by Independence that are part of the Teal kind of movement or umbrella, mainly metropolitan city seats, and they need to refocus on
the heartland. And he gave an example of Tamworth, a town in central New South Wales, and said that there are more card holding members of One Nation in Tamworth than there were Nationals and that was traditionally a very dominant location for the Nationals Party.
One thing that also stood out to me from that press conference he held was he seemed to mention quite a few times that he doesn't seem to have a good relationship with the leader of the Nationals. Who is David Little Proud. Yeah, And he pretty much just said they don't have a good relationship and so therefore they can't work together.
He is known to use metaphors about romantic relationships and the way he talks about politics. I remember there were a number of press conferences when he he was the Deputy Prime Minister where he would talk about it the coalition is like a romantic relationship, and that metaphor came up a lot yesterday in the way that he was talking about the Nationals and David Little Proud and said that any breakup is hard and all of that kind
of language. So he's clearly somebody who felt very passionately for the party that he spent thirty years as a serving member of and that all ended yesterday.
One thing I want to talk about is when I think about the Australian political landscape, I always think of it as being quite different to the US in the sense that, in my mind, we're not voting for people, we are voting for parties. So when it comes to the Leader of Australia, the leader is who leads the party that Australia has elected in the House of representatives. And that's different to in the US, where you are directly voting for a.
Person there's a name on the ticket.
Yes, And so what's interesting here is when a politician says I am leaving my party and going to another party. In my head, I think, can you just do that? Because aren't we more focused on voting for parties as opposed to people?
Does that make sense totally?
But then with this, what I have found out from the research that the Daily Oss has done is that that's actually not quite the case, because what Barnaby Joyce did yesterday is well within the rules.
There's no rules at all that stops a politician from changing parties or sitting as an independent once they are in Parliament. So under the constitution, MPs are serving as individuals. So they're elected to represent an electorate, but they're serving still as the person. And this is not you know, this is not without precedent. Fatima Payman, she left the Labor Party last year. She remains in the Senate as
an independent. One interesting quirk with Barnaby Joyce's announcement when he was asked about this, you know, what do you say to the people of New England who voted for you as a National's member, and now you're not a member there anymore. He did make the point that he has already announced that he's not contesting that seat at the next federal election, so the Nationals we're going to
have to pick somebody new anyway. There is a rumor though, that he is going to contest a Senate seat, so he wants to go back into the Senate and represent New South Wales this time in the Senate, and we don't know yet in what capacity he'll be doing that.
All right, we're going to take a quick break to hear a message from today's sponsor. Can you just explain You just mentioned that Joyce will not be recontesting his seat of New England, but to be clear, he will remain in that seat until the next election.
Yeah, exactly. So he still has two and a half years of the parliamentary term to serve as the Member of New England. That is his as long as he wants it and as long as he doesn't quit his job entirely. But he can do that in either the capacity of being a member of another party, probably one nation, or as an independent one hundred percent safe.
Okay, So let's talk about One Nation is rumored to be joining One Nation. At the time of recording, he has not announced that. We've actually already spoken about One Nation on the podcast. It's a great episode because it's leader, Pauline Hanson wore a burker in the Senate this week. But for anyone who missed that episode, do you want to just give us a quick overview of One Nation and why Barnaby Joyce might be interested in joining that party?
So I think we'll link to the episode so you can have a proper listen about the history of the party. But all you need to know really is that it was founded by Pauline Hanson back in nineteen ninety seven and the party, similarly to the National says that it represents everyday Australians who feels like the major parties has
left them behind. They are very popular. The main popularity they see is in the rural and regional areas and they're campaigning pretty heavily on things like immigration, economic nationalism and what they call a pushback against wokeness or political correctness. I wanted to talk quickly about the polls because I think Barnaby Joyce's potential move to one nation has significance when you look at the direction of popularity of these two parties. So one nation has its highest primary vote
in the poll. So polsters will ask who would you vote for if the election was today. They've got a record high primary vote of fourteen percent, which is its highest result in the poll since the late nineties.
What does primary vote mean there?
So who would you vote for in the first position on your on your numbering one to six leaving no box unchecked? Kind of vibe at the poll, and so you only get to pick one because it's the which party would you put as number one? And fourteen percent of the population says one nation. The Greens in Independence are on twelve point five and thirteen point five percent. To put that in perspective, so you know one nation is based on the polls, they are more popular than
the Greens, and they are more popular than Independence. There is still some room between them and the coalition though. The coalition's latest numbers are twenty seven percent, but that number has slipped a lot in the last twelve months. So you've got one party in the coalition that's kind of trending down. You've got one nation that's trending up, and that's a very interesting change of dynamics and almost a wave that Barnaby Joyce will likely ride.
I want to talk about that decline in popularity for the Coalition because I think one thing that is interesting is, like you said, one nation is on the rise and the Coalition is on the decline. There is a big gap between them, but it's an interesting trend to look at. Hypothetically, if one nation was to overtake the Coalition in popularity, not just in polls, but at an actual election, could they become the new opposition?
Well, they could if they formed a new coalition essentially, because remember there's one hundred and fifty seats in the House of Representatives. You need seventy six of them to govern. And so if Barnaby Joyce joins one Nation in the House of Reps, that's their only member right now, so they would need to find seventy five other members to join.
So to be clear, one nation currently has no politicians in the House of Representatives. All of their members who are elected, all of their elected members are in the Senate.
Exactly, so they have a lot of grounds to have a have a long way to go, but what it does mean is it could destabilize the current coalition makeup and then once you have kind of a bunch of minor parties. We see this in other countries around the world where there's maybe a group of four or five minor parties. Let's say that they all of the seventy six, they can all contribute between ten and fifteen. You then could see a world where a party with ten members
could actually be the leader of a broader coalition. And that's where you see some of the parties that have traditionally fringe interests of minor interests suddenly become in positions of power. So it's definitely not within the next five years, but it's definitely not a totally hypothetical notion.
And just before we go, how has the National Party responded to this news from Barnaby Joyce.
Well, understandably they're not happy. So just before Barnaby Joyce's announcement, the Senate Leader of the Nationals, Bridget Mackenzie, she said the move by Joyce would quote trash his legacy, saying Joyce had a choice between being part of a party of government to get things done, being the Nationals, or join a protest party where you won't be able to do that type of thing being one nation. So some
strong words there. It's clear that the relationship is totally broken down as per him leaving, so not surprised that that was the response. But for the Nationals, politically, they lose a vote and they lose a number, and that makes a big difference in the world of politics.
I also reached out to the team of National's leader David Little Proud to see if they had anything to say, and they said, we're not commenting on it, which is super interesting. I mean, like we said at the start, this is a very high profile member of the Nationals and for the leader to not even comment on the fact that he's departing is quite significant.
It's almost like you might put that to him. Next week is when he's sitting in the chair that I'm in right now.
And that is a very good place to leave this conversation. But I do want to say, like Sam said, I will be interviewing David Little Proud, who is, as we have said many times, he's the leader of the National Party. I'll be interviewing him next week. If you do have any question suggestions that you would like me to put to him. You can email us at Helloatthdalios dot com dot au. I'll be having a look at any question
suggestions that are sent there. I think it will be a particularly interesting time now to be talking to him. That is all we have time for today, Sam, thank you for taking us through that. Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Daily Ods. We'll be back this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Aarunda Bunjelung good in woman from Gadigol Country.
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigol people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.