Barnaby Joyce has officially made the move to One Nation, announcing the move on Monday from Tamworth alongside his new leader, Pauline Hanson.
With two enormously large egos now in the small but fast-surging-in-popularity right-wing party, there’s plenty of speculation regarding how long the relationship will last, especially given recent examples, such as Mark Latham’s short-lived time in leading One Nation in NSW.
But one thing Hanson can benefit from having Joyce at the party is a substantial salary boost, thanks to One Nation now having five MPs and achieving official party status.
This means that as party leader, Hanson receives a 42.5 per cent pay increase, taking her salary to $340,900. She is also entitled to additional resources, including staff (although that’s up to the prime minister to approve).
This shift in pay creates an interesting anomaly: there are very few examples of a man’s move leading to a woman receiving not only a pay increase, but a substantial one worth $100,000.
Should Joyce eventually become party leader, as he clearly wants to be, and should he earn a NSW Senate spot at the next election as he hopes to achieve and keep at least five MPs across both houses (which polling suggests could very likely happen), Joyce will also take over Hanson’s $340,900 party leader salary.
Meanwhile, Hanson has had plenty to say in the past about taxpayer-funded salaries.
In June, she called for a review of high-level public servant salaries following confirmation of a 2.4 per cent pay rise for top bureaucrats, departmental heads and federal politicians. She did not criticise the pay increase for MPs, but did describe senior public official salaries as “excessive”.
Back in 2021, Hanson proposed an amendment to superannuation legislation for lifting the concessional cap for extra super contributions to the age of 67, which Senator Murray Watt said at the time would have given Hanson a “nice little pay rise” (estimated to be worth $30,000). The amendment failed.
Speaking from Tamworth on Monday, Joyce described Hanson as someone he has great respect for, and someone who has done “an incredibly positive thing for our nation.”
He particularly noted the “immense pressure” Hanson exerted to remove net zero.
Abandoning net zero has long been Joyce’s key priority. But despite his former party, and the Coalition, actually committing to removing the target, Joyce still defected from the party his electorate thought he’d remain a part of.
One Nation’s support has been surging according to recent polling, almost tripling since the Federal election in May.