It’s finally happened. After weeks of drawing as much media attention as he can, Barnaby Joyce has confirmed he is leaving the Nationals to sit in parliament as an independent.
Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, said he had been relegated to the “ejection seat” on the Coalition backbench and wasn’t happy about it.
“If you’re here, this is the ejection seat, this is about as far away you can get from the dispatch box, and if you’re sitting here, they want you out there now,” he told parliament on Thursday.
Joyce will now move to sit as an independent, although he hasn’t ruled out a future run for the Senate with One Nation, a party that has been rising in the polls – unlike the Coalition.
“Thirty years with the National Party. It’s certainly not a decision I took lightly,” Joyce said.
He noted there had been a breakdown in his relationship with the Nationals leadership, but said it’s not like he “fell over at the first hurdle”.
Now sitting with the crossbench, Joyce has the freedom to do and advocate for whatever policy position he likes. It’s a move that could lead to his politics becoming even more far-fetched.
On Thursday, Joyce noted part of the appeal of a potential Senate tilt is that it could bring him into a position of more political power.
“It’s the appeal also of the Senate, of just review[ing] and amend[ing] legislation,” he said.
“You’d have to come to me on each piece of legislation and say ‘what are your views?’ I’ve done the Senate before – eight years, seven months and a day. I know that I know the job.”
The question now is what political agenda Joyce will pursue, finally free from the grips of the Coalition. A look at some of his past policy ideas could give us indication.
As we’ve long known, Joyce has been one of Australia’s most prominent climate sceptics. He has been an advocate for ditching net zero for years and in July, he introduced a bill that would have scrapped a number of laws related to climate change.
He has always argued that Australia is powerless to reduce the impacts of climate change, even predicting in 2019 that the population would be wiped out by an ice age anyway.
And then there was his Christmas message in 2024, when he took to social media speaking about climate change and his belief in a “higher authority”, saying “look I just don’t want the government any more in my life, I’m sick of the government being in my life.”
Let’s not forget Joyce’s political theatre over a recent piece of legislation on paid parental leave, using debate on Baby Priya’s bill to make some unhinged and entirely irrelevant comments about late term abortion.
When it comes to gender equality, Joyce has been no friend to women. From allegations of sexual harassment (which he denied), to the time he invoked his son’s name in 2019 while criticising politicians in the NSW state parliament pushing to decriminalise abortion.
“In the NSW Parliament they are debating whether Tom had no classification of human rights,” Joyce said at the time. “To say he didn’t have the rights of other human life is to say he must be subhuman.”
Then, there was the time he told same-sex marriage campaigners to “just get out of my face”.
Just this week, Joyce defended Pauline Hanson’s second burqa-wearing stunt in the Senate, criticising those who spoke out against her.
“I always find it annoying when everyone makes a mad dash for the offence microphone,” he told radio 2GB.
There’s a whole lot more we could point to, but these positions give some idea of where Joyce could now head as an independent. He’ll have more influence on the crossbench than he does sitting on the Coalition’s backbench and there won’t be anyone holding him back.
As the ABC’s David Speers put it: “he wants more power, he wants more relevance”.
And that’s before he makes a move to One Nation and potentially succeeds Pauline Hanson as its leader.