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Barnaby Joyce dipped his head as he told reporters, after conducting half a dozen interviews across two days, that he didn't want to talk about himself "that much".
Standing outside his electorate office in Tamworth, the Nationals MP's frustration at the party he once led was palpable as he rattled off his gripes. His evergreen annoyance over the Coalition's position on net zero was chief among them.
As was the relationship breakdown between himself and David Littleproud and whoever was responsible for sharing the news of his flirtation with Pauline Hanson and One Nation.
The fevered scuttlebutt goes like this: Joyce won't recontest the next election in his seat of New England. He'll then defect to One Nation, where he can, in time, replace Hanson as leader and potentially make a switch to the Senate.
"I'm a free agent," Joyce said, while very much remaining a member of the Nationals, albeit one that will probably not sit with the party room when parliament meets next week.
Hanson has made no secret of previously trying to woo Joyce to join One Nation. Her offer was first extended when Joyce was filmed sprawled on a Canberra footpath late at night. It was a standing offer, she told her Facebook fans at the time. Joyce said no.
But the fault lines over net zero have pushed Joyce to consider the alternatives and Hanson's party, he said, was the only one that wasn't "barking mad" on energy policy.
It's only natural for someone going through the pros and cons list of whether to break up with their long-term partner to consider what else might be out there.
Joyce confirmed he spoke to Hanson around six weeks ago and then again over the weekend. He rationalised given everyone had reported they were talking, why not get on the blower and do the thing that people were saying they were already doing?
Why not exchange the Nationals dark green for the orange that screams please explain?
For what it's worth, Hanson appears to have somewhat cooled on the idea of handing the reins to Joyce — at least publicly. At 71, Hanson knows she can't stay on forever ("I haven't got an ego that big," she says) but she has bristled against the idea of being written off early.
Joyce has to prove himself to her.
"Well, it's all open, isn't it? So whoever proves themselves and could make a good leader for the party and make sure we're getting our policies and what we want to do for the Australian people and represent them and to make the other political parties accountable," she told Sky News Australia on Wednesday evening.
Meanwhile, the Coalition is urging Joyce to stay. A break from the party, they argue, is completely normal. Deputy leader Kevin Hogan stopped attending meetings back in 2018 and so did Llew O'Brien in 2020.
The man Joyce replaced all those years ago, Michael McCormack, wants Joyce to bide his time and is not all that sympathetic to his plight.
"I lost the deputy prime ministership, I lost my shadow ministry and I am sitting with him up the back of the House of Representatives, but I am not going to leave the party any time soon," he said.
Littleproud claims he's willing to take him back. But if he were to return to the fold then there would be boundaries: focus on the collective, not the individual.
Two thumbs up for two daysin Washington
Half a world away, Anthony Albanese's week could perhaps be summed up by the two thumbs up he chucked to onlookers watching his departure from Washington.
The prime minister had emerged from his long-awaited meeting with US President Donald Trump unscathed. There was an assurance on the AUKUS submarine agreement, a critical minerals deal signed and Trump appeared pretty relaxed about Australia's level of defence spending.
Trump telling US ambassador Kevin Rudd that "he didn't like him, and never would" played for awkward laughter. There is nothing to see here, Albanese later assured, it was "just some banter". Trump had agreed "all was forgiven".
The almost three-hour meeting, which included Albanese and Rudd hanging out with the US president in the Oval Office, smoothed over any lingering annoyance, the prime minister insisted.
The exchange was the only blip in a trip that couldn't have gone better for Albanese if he scripted it himself. While the prime minister didn't secure a tariff exemption for Australian exports, he also wasn't bailed up to significantly lift defence spending.
Delays have been Albanese's friend as of late.
As ex-tropical cyclone Alfred pushed back a planned election date and helped hand Labor a larger than expected election victory, the go slow in securing a meeting with Trump gave Albanese an edge.
Two weeks earlier China had published announcements 61 and 62. The unimaginatively named documents outlined Beijing would implement new export controls on rare earths designed to tighten the grip on China's supply of critical minerals. It struck a nerve with Trump.
The government had been dangling the carrot of Australia's critical minerals in front of the Trump administration for some time with limited results. Until this week.
Pull the (climate) trigger
Back at home, Albanese's so-called Mr Fixer, Murray Watt, has been hard at work at the second coming of the government's environment reforms after they were scuppered at the final hurdle by Albanese in the lead up to the last election amid concerns from Western Australia.
The reforms govern the approvals of housing, energy and other major projects. It comes at a time where there is a desire to speed up the approval process for projects, in say … critical minerals.
But developments can have environmental impacts to consider and Australia's desire to challenge China's critical mineral stronghold is an example of this. After all, while critical minerals and rare earths have the fancy name, it's just branding: it's another subsection of mining.
To the chagrin of the Greens, the government has no plans to include a climate trigger to block fossil fuel projects.
It's still going to be an uphill battle for Watt to get the reforms over the line. He'll have to convince either the Coalition or the Greens to play ball. Like Hanson, Watt has been courting the Coalition in his bid to get the reforms through.
It looks like Watt could get his heart broken.
But hey, at least the government still has another climate trick up its sleeve, and could force Coalition MPs to stake their claim on Joyce's bill to repeal net zero next week. |
