‘Barnaby rule’: Joyce scoffs at reports he is being sidelined
Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has scoffed at the idea of a special rule designed to hide him during the upcoming federal election campaign.
It follows reports in the Nine newspapers at the weekend that a new rule requiring the party’s shadow ministers to get permission from leader David Littleproud to travel to other electorates had been imposed – aimed at Joyce.
“I’m not going to deny they have said that everybody has to coordinate through the leader’s office, but maybe that’s the case in all parties,” Joyce told Seven’s Sunrise on Monday.
“Why did we win every seat and pick up an extra Senate seat [in 2022]? Why is it that every election I’ve gone to, either as leader or deputy, we never, ever went backwards, even when the Liberal Party went massively backwards?”
On Saturday, the Nine papers reported that the so-called “Barnaby rule” was implemented only late last year, in a strategy partly designed to muzzle Joyce – who is a key rival for Littleproud and believed to be a drag on votes from women.
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“Women didn’t trust us at the last election and Barnaby was a key reason for that. Why would we have him in seats where he hurts us?” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted a senior National as saying.
Joyce, the New England MP, has twice led the nationals and is a big fundraiser for the party. But he also sometimes bucks party lines.
Asked on Sunrise how he was getting along with Littleproud, Joyce said “very well”.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was also on Sunrise on Monday. She said Joyce should visit her electorate in Sydney
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“I think the more people that see him the better,” she said.
Elsewhere, with the federal election due by May, political pundits have pointed at Labor’s poor showing in a Victorian byelection on Saturday.
With counting resuming in the formerly safe Labor state seat of Werribee on Monday, the result remained too close to call.
The party’s primary vote in the outer-western Melbourne seat vacated by the former state treasurer Tim Pallas, was down 16.7 per cent.
Liberal candidate Steve Murphy had 29.04 per cent of the primary vote, with Labor’s John Lister on 28.71 per cent.
But Murphy (49.45 per cent) was trailing Lister (50.55) on a two-candidate-preferred basis.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said while politicians watched state byelections, it “did not change anything” for federal Labor.
“Our plans will remain cost-of-living, providing help where we can, getting on with doing the things we need to do in Medicare and infrastructure and working with state and territory governments,” she told ABC Insiders on Sunday.
“We’ll continue to sell that message and invest in those services.”
In another Melbourne byelection, the Liberals took the inner-eastern seat of Prahran from the Greens for the first time in more than a decade.
– with AAP
