Yeah nah: claims Joyce joining Hanson are fantasy

Pauline Hanson is making hay this week out of the defection of Tamworth Nationals Branch chair Steve Coxhead to the new Tamworth branch of One Nation. But claims Joyce would follow the unimpressive Coxhead are simply laughable.

Regardless of your politics, you have to give Barnaby Joyce credit that he knows how to make the national press dance to exactly the tune that he wants. And what he wants is for them all to be talking about him. So, if Pauline Hanson’s One Nation are claiming that they are in ‘advanced talks’ with Joyce, then Joyce knows the best thing he can do is refuse to comment, thus keeping the story alive and garnering himself widespread national press coverage for days.

Which is exactly what’s happening.

Since the Sydney Morning Herald story last night – far from their first about Joyce that was just utterly wrong – the Guardian, News, Channel 7, Channel 9, Sky, AFR, et al. have all piled on, taking the bait so easily offered up by “sources”. ABC are apparently going to the launch of the new One Nation Tamworth branch tonight, certain to dribble out some similar garbage in coming days. On the socials, the disparate groups of the far right wing have seized the story as further evidence of growing support for their various agendas, including the (allegedly Nazi affiliated and definitely controversial) ‘March for Australia‘ group.

Senior National Party figures have also declined to comment on the record, but not because there is something massively wrong or there is some huge defection from the Nats to One Nation. From my various conversations, the number of actual resignations from the Nationals Tamworth Branch ranges from 5 to 8 people – and they are believed to be all related by blood or marriage to Steve Coxhead. Apparently, Steve’s mum has been working the phones pretty hard to try and get more.

But, as one Nationals Tamworth branch member quipped, “they can have him”. The Branch Chair is the kind of position that people who are never going to get elected get as a bit of a consolation prize. Coxhead has appeared on a ballot under the National Party banner – in the very last spot and completely unwinnable position of 15 on the combined Liberal/National upper house ticket at the NSW Government elections in 2023. The truck driver has also been a member of another microparty before the Nationals, and it is generally understood that the latest party switch is really driven by his career ambitions to be a candidate for office, not anything to do with policy or principle.

But Hanson’s spin machine is making a great deal out of it, with all kinds of statements, emails to members, videos, and so on, replete with many unsubstantiated claims.

Hanson suffers from the same malady of needing people to always be talking about her and does not deal well with anyone challenging her often fanciful narratives and alternative truths. Nor do the people around her – which is why the most telling thing for me was a conversation with the official Pauline Hanson’s One Nation spokesperson who refused to give me any details about the launch of the Tamworth branch.

We were denied basic details, including time and date of the launch event, which Hanson herself is apparently attending.

When I asked if Brent Larkham – the candidate in the last federal election – was the local contact, I was specifically told not to speak to Larkham and that only the national spokesperson could provide comment on the record about what he described as “a very significant story” because “this is Barnaby Joyce’s territory, this is National Party heartland!”

It’s not clear if Coxhead and Larkham were speaking without approval in the TV coverage of the defection, or the media spokesperson just didn’t want Larkham – who I had a really good long chat with during the last election about all manner of things – talking to a journalist who might, you know, actually ask questions. The spokesperson just got utterly flustered, contradicted himself several times, and before he could add another triple twist with pike to an answer to such challenging questions as “when is the branch launch happening?” I just told him to email the details. Shockingly, we did not receive an email.

That kind of dictatorial control (and unprofessional chaos) has always been a hallmark of Hanson’s party, particularly since she regained control of One Nation, re-added her name to the organisation, and had the constitution rewritten to specify she is ‘president for life’ in 2017. This is not the first time such small and largely disorganised parties have tried to implement a branch-like organisation to build their base, but it always fails precisely because the central organisation is both not willing and far too disorganised to effectively hand over power.

Politics and political campaigning in Australia have always suffered from copycat syndromes, where people don’t know how to do politics other than to copy what has been done before, seemingly without question, and certainly with no understanding of why they do it. We have branches and put up corflute posters and hand out how-to-votes. This is what we do because this is what is done. One of my favourite books about Australian elections, Parties and People by Creighton Burns, published in 1961, makes exactly this point well, and it is still very true today.

So One Nation has decided to have branches. Because this is the way.

And, when the newly established branches of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation realise that they have no power or influence, that the ‘president for life’ and her flying monkeys have all the control, they too will collapse under the weight of false promises and crushing disorganisation like many other centrally controlled microparties that attempted to establish branches or regional divisions. Anyone who understands organisational psychology knows that you can’t create regional divisions after the fact and still hold all the power in HQ.

There is an ocean of difference between the chaos of a microparty formed around a narcissistic leadership character – whether Hanson, or Palmer, or Katter, or Xenophon, or all the others – and a genuinely democratic party established from grassroots movements and collective will. The former will always struggle and then die with the founder. The latter are made from sterner stuff, can tolerate changes in leader, and while they can struggle to get established and at times face existential crises, they will endure as long as the ideology that underpins the movement is sound.

In short, the power and strength come from the grassroots in all democracies; it can’t be manufactured top-down.

Again, regardless of your politics, any political observer has to conclude that Barnaby Joyce is no fool. There is no way he is joining a party that bears someone else’s name, with unclear and inconsistent ideology, that he can never be leader of, and will die with her.

And yet, about once a year, he manages to manufacture feverish discussion about whether he’s going to leave the National Party. It’s just part of the cycle of Joyce: policy issue division, should be leadership call, said something outrageous scandal, reprise policy issue debate, he’s going to quit the Nats speculation, personal drama, Liberals fail Nats are better team unity moment, random scandal, OMG how do so many people vote for this guy outrage, back to policy issue – rinse and repeat, mix it up every now and then just for fun. Keeps him in the headlines all year round.

If Joyce does ever really quit the National Party, which is doubtful, it would be to establish his own party, not join Hanson.

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