Updated ,first published
Coalition MPs have escalated their attacks on the credibility of One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce, as the opposition scrambles to eke out a competitive result in the upcoming byelection.
As Hanson campaigns to turn record-high polling numbers into election wins in the federal NSW seat of Farrer and the South Australian election, Coalition MPs Angus Taylor, Tim Wilson, James Paterson and Matt Canavan turned their guns on One Nation’s competence and scandal-prone MPs.
Wilson said: “Small and family businesses and the self-employed need more than Barnaby Joyce flat out on a Braddon pavement, they know that we need a comprehensive policy program that seeks to grow the economy and create opportunities”.
Labor has decided to sit out the contest in Farrer, vacated by former Liberal leader Sussan Ley, leaving the Coalition parties in an uphill battle against the surging populists and a Climate 200-backed independent who spent weeks campaigning before other candidates were picked.
Ley will be travelling overseas during the byelection, frustrating some colleagues who felt she created an impossible first test for Taylor as leader – even though she left $250,000 in the bank for campaigning.
One Nation spent months eating into the Coalition’s base without much pushback from opposition MPs until Canavan, the new Nationals leader, called out Hanson’s anti-Muslim comments last month.
On Monday, Canavan built on his arguments to confront Joyce.
Promoting former Nationals leader Michael McCormack and demoting predecessor David Littleproud in a reshuffle, Canavan repeatedly pitched McCormack, the opposition’s new water spokesman, as a successful former deputy prime minister, subtly contrasting him with Joyce.
“When Michael was deputy prime minister, he set up the national water grid,” Canavan said in a message to frustrated irrigators in Farrer. “When Michael was deputy prime minister, we were building dams again.”
Canavan, who has backed free-trade deals but supported some protectionist causes, took on the trade portfolio in a revamped frontbench, challenging the Coalition’s traditional free-market position.
After declaring he was “buggered” last week when he quit the Nationals leadership, Littleproud was shifted out of the shadow cabinet into a more junior emergency services portfolio.
“With this team, we have a posse of patriots,” Canavan said, reinforcing his Australia-first rhetoric from his first press conference, which he backed up with jokey social media posts about “manifesting a hyper Australia”.
Taylor, speaking at the Liberal campaign launch in Farrer, also turned the blowtorch on Joyce after the One Nation defector criticised Taylor’s decision as energy minister to pay the US to store Australia’s fuel reserves.
“We made sure that the remaining refineries stayed in this country and we want to see Australian fuel working for Australians. Barnaby Joyce should be saying that. He hasn’t,” said Taylor, who has been more cautious commenting on Hanson.
Realising that he needs to counter One Nation without alienating its supporters, Taylor dodged questions about whether he would preference One Nation ahead of independent Michelle Milthorpe.
Paterson said on Nine’s Today program that 70 per cent of Hanson’s MPs elected since the 1990s had quit the party.
“One of the questions Australians have to ask themselves as they contemplate their vote at the next election, roughly two years away, is do they really think that One Nation can manage our $3 trillion economy? Do they think that Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce can run a government?” Paterson said.
Taylor’s new candidate in Farrer, lawyer and Albury councillor Raissa Butkowski, had an awkward exchange with a reporter in her first press conference on Monday when asked if she had contacted Ley.
“I have reached out to Sussan, but I also think that she deserves a well-earned break,” Butkowski said.
It is not unusual for MPs who quit parliament to play no role campaigning in byelections. Malcolm Turnbull, like Ley, went overseas after being deposed. But Ley’s critics felt she had hurt the party by quitting at a moment when the party’s primary vote was at record lows.
Taylor has acknowledged in recent interviews that Ley’s decision made life hard for the Liberals, but noted her right to depart politics in a manner of her choosing after he took her job.
This masthead understands neither Taylor nor any member of his senior leadership team contacted Ley to ask her to delay her resignation or to help campaign in Farrer.
One MP who supports Ley said: “Win, lose or draw, the Farrer result is Angus Taylor’s result. He didn’t contact her for a month, publicly trashed her and then said she was unpopular locally. On that basis, whether she’s in Albury, Alabama or Amsterdam, this byelection outcome is his and his alone.”
One Nation’s candidate in Farrer, David Farley, said Ley would be given a “blank brass plate” for her time as the member for Farrer, claiming she had been absent.
“It says nothing underneath it … because there was nothing to say,” he said.
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Paul Sakkal is chief political correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and has won Walkley and Quill awards. Reach him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14Connect via X or email.