Everyone knows Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce can deliver a line.
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If he's accomplished in nothing else, it's in practising "retail politics" that speaks directly to voters and ignores experts and media. At election time, it comes in handy for the Coalition. It's partly why the Nationals reinstalled him as leader last year, believing he'd protect seats in regions like central Queensland.
The Deputy Prime Minister was in that same region on Wednesday, there to fulfil that very purpose. He delivered more than a few lines in a speech to the Capricornia Chamber of Commerce in Rockhampton. They flew thick and fast, as he gave a freewheeling kind of performance.
In the audience, Prime Minister Scott Morrison sat looking amused, and somewhat uncertain, like someone about to take the next plunge, curve or hill on a roller coaster. Who knew where his Coalition deputy was going to take things next on this wild ride in Rocky. Just hold on.
But here is where Mr Joyce took the audience. The election wasn't a popularity contest, he said, nor an episode of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. It wasn't even Married at First Sight. It was about strength, the Nationals leader said.
The Coalition was "strong" on the economy, he said, while Labor was "weak", its leader failing to memorise a detail so vital as the unemployment rate. Australians faced a choice on national security between the "tall bald Peter Dutton" and Brendan O'Connor, a man even Anthony Albanese didn't want in the defence portfolio, Mr Joyce said. Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles, he said, seemed to be "in witness protection''.
All were mindful that disunity is death in most elections, especially on the explosive issue of climate change.
It was a full frontal attack. Not even Mr Albanese's Bluesfest visit this campaign escaped the Nationals leader's criticism. Worse Mr Joyce said, Labor's senior members did not know how their own climate policies, namely their safeguard mechanism, would work.
"That is just astounding. So you're seeing the choice. Incompetence. Weakness. Basically Zoolander politics, where they think if they do 'blue steel' better than us they somehow get the key. They don't," he said.
Mr Joyce pitched the Coalition as the better choice for regional Australia against Labor.
But, he also signalled to his regional audience that he considered the Nationals an equal partner to the Liberals. He jovially ribbed Liberal MP and confidante of the Prime Minister, Ben Morton, as someone who wore clothes and used a phone, TV and kitchen stove from overseas. "He has a European car, I can tell by the look on his face," he said to a laughing audience.
"Everything in this man's life came from overseas, and somebody, somewhere must be putting something on the boat, and sending it in the other direction," Mr Joyce said.
"You know who that is? You people put it on the boat," he told the regional Queensland audience.
All good-natured and well-meant, and taken so by Mr Morton and Mr Morrison, each slumped laughing in their seats. But, it was a subtle signal that the Nationals would keep the Liberals honest to the bush, and would remind them where Australian exports came from.
The Prime Minister earlier acknowledged he and Mr Joyce led two different parties but said they worked together for the regions, prompting resolute nods from the Nationals leader in the front row. Never mind those damning texts about Mr Morrison in the press. The two leaders were all good, apparently.
And never mind that one of Mr Joyce's supporters in reinstalling him to the Nationals leadership, Rockhampton-based senator Matt Canavan, had torn another strip off the Coalition's climate change policy the day before, saying that the net zero by 2050 target was effectively dead.
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It was such an obvious gash in that veneer of Coalition unity that other Nationals rushed to repair it on Wednesday morning.
"Pull your head in Matt," local Liberal Nationals MP Michelle Landry said, having been prompted by a journalist at a press conference in the central Queensland city's art gallery. Elsewhere, former leader Michael McCormack said much the same as Ms Landry. All were mindful that disunity is death in most elections, especially on the explosive issue of climate change, something the Liberals and Nationals had butted heads over only last year.
For all the talk of unity, it seemed telling there was no joint press conference between Mr Morrison and Mr Joyce in Rockhampton. Surely that would have been the surest statement of unity. Instead, they tag-teamed in the more staged confines of a speech to a business chamber.
In their pitch for regional votes, they were at pains to look like a team.
Not exactly convincing, even if you hadn't been watching for the last couple of years.