Barnaby Joyce could be booted out as Nationals leader after Australia election results

Barnaby Joyce is fighting to retain Nationals leadership after the Coalition’s election bloodbath which handed power to Labor for the first time in nine years.

The Nationals held all 16 of their seats but failed to pick up the targets of Lingiari in the Northern Territory and Hunter in NSW.

Mr Joyce and his allies say he should remain leader because holding all seats is a great achievement during an election loss.

Barnaby Joyce (pictured with partner Vikki Campion and their child) is fighting to retain Nationals leadership after the Coalition’s election bloodbath

But former Nationals leader Michael McCormack says Mr Joyce is partly to blame for the Liberals losing six inner-city seats to climate-conscious independents and change is needed.

These independents pointed out that if you vote Liberal you may end up with Mr Joyce – a climate sceptic who was against the 2050 net zero emissions target –  as deputy prime minister.

Under a Liberal-National Coalition government the leader of the Nationals is Deputy PM. 

Mr McCormack, who was ousted as leader in June 2021, said the Liberals may have held more seats if he had not been dumped by his colleagues. 

‘Certainly, no inner-city politicians or candidate was ever campaigning against Michael McCormack and using my name and discussing my integrity and reputation,’ he said. 

‘There shouldn’t have been a change of leadership of the National Party in June last year, there simply shouldn’t have.’   

David Littleproud (pictured on election day) is considering a tilt at Nationals leadership

Mr Joyce last year won the leadership by one vote – but has lost four allies to retirement or Senate ticket relegation. 

Potential challengers for leadership include deputy Nationals leader David Littleproud and Gippsland MP Darren Chester. 

Despite independent candidates successfully weaponising his unpopularity amongst inner-city voters, Mr Joyce says his role as deputy prime minister under the coalition was not a drag on the Liberal Party.

‘People are not that stupid… they know whether they’re voting for a Nationals candidate or Liberals candidate… there were a lot of other issues at play,’ he said.

No members of the Nationals had told him his unpopularity had cost the government the election, he added.

But Mr Chester, a Victorian, said Mr Joyce could hardly take credit for the wins, given those seats were secured under different party leadership.

‘It’s a bit spurious to simply point to the scoreboard and say we held our seats when most of those seats came on board during the period of Warren Truss’s leadership and then Michael McCormack held them,’ he told ABC Radio.

In a savage Facebook post, he wrote: ‘When the wealth-belt is prepared to toss out a moderate, experienced and capable treasurer, for an unproven activist, you need to listen to the message, regardless of how unpalatable it is.

‘It was simple and devastatingly effective to say a vote for those moderate Liberals was a vote for the ”dinosaurs” in the Nationals who didn’t believe in climate change.’ 

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg lost his seat to Monique Ryan in Kooyong. 

The Nationals are due to meet within the next two weeks. 

former Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack and wife Catherine Shaw in Albury in 2019