Interviewing Barnaby Joyce is not like talking to other politicians. Actually, that’s not quite true. There are plenty of other candid MPs and senators.
It’s just that most of them are toiling away in backbench obscurity or howling at the moon in minor parties like Mark Latham. What makes Barnaby different from the other tell-it-like-is, BS-intolerant tribunes, is he’s not a nobody or a has been, as of this week he’s the deputy prime minister of Australia. For the second time.
As a so-called ‘populist’ Joyce has been likened to Donald Trump. But the comparison doesn’t really work. Throughout his career Trump was obsessed with always appearing dignified. Barnaby couldn’t give a toss.
In fact, he’s much more like Boris Johnson, another politician happy to look scruffy and play the fool in public. Like Johnson, Joyce too is much more-widely read and thoughtful than his public image suggests. And like the British PM despite being a complete political insider he has also risen to the top by successfully posing as the anti-politician.
arnaby Joyce enjoys a beer with locals in the St George Hotel. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen
What makes talking to Joyce different from his cabinet colleagues, is that in interviews with them it quickly becomes clear there are roped-off-areas in which they are reluctant to stray. It’s not that you won’t get an answer, you will, but it won’t be much use: just a recitation of whatever the talking points are that day for the subject at hand. Speaking to Joyce is an unnerving experience because when you ask him something he appears to think about the question and then give you an answer that shows he has clearly engaged with it. Or he gives a good impression of having done so, which for a newspaper reporter’s purposes amounts to the same thing.
