Barnaby Joyce has set out the price of One Nation support for an Angus Taylor-led Coalition government in a hung parliament, naming pro-mining policies, new dams and the revival of the $45 billion inland rail project among the party’s demands.
The New England MP, who defected from the Nationals to One Nation, said the party would also seek to abolish the climate change department, deregulate farming, reduce taxes including the tobacco excise and cut immigration if its numbers were needed to keep the Coalition in office.
Joyce said any negotiations would not be based on ideology and could work in either direction, depending on the balance of power after an election.
“It won’t be an ideological conversation,” he said. “And if we’ve got more numbers than them, we’d expect that deal going back in the other direction. It cuts both ways.”
His comments followed a television interview in which he said he had spoken to “very senior” Liberals about One Nation providing confidence and supply to the Coalition.
Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan told colleagues they had not held such discussions with Joyce. Taylor said he had not authorised anyone else to conduct them.
“No, and I gave no authority to anyone else to have that conversation,” Taylor said when asked whether he knew about the alleged talks.
Tim Wilson, the shadow treasurer, dismissed Joyce’s account as “a figment of Barnaby’s imagination” and suggested the former deputy prime minister regretted joining a party in which he no longer controlled the political agenda.
Joyce rejected the criticism, telling Wilson: “Yeah, Tim, I just made it up. I get bored, mate. Clown.”
Jane Hume, a Coalition frontbencher, also questioned the claim, saying Joyce could be “clutching at straws” and might be experiencing “some sort of post-purchase dissonance”.
Joyce declined to identify the Coalition figures he said he had spoken to, but argued that discussions about confidence and supply were inevitable if neither major party could secure a majority.
“Let’s all be adults about this,” he said. “We don’t want chaos; we want to remove the socialists.”
He challenged Coalition MPs to state publicly that they would refuse One Nation’s support, while stressing that Pauline Hanson would make the final decisions about any arrangement.
One Nation does not want to contest the election promising a formal coalition with the Coalition, Joyce said. Hanson has expressed an interest in working with the Coalition, although her party is also targeting Liberal and Nationals-held seats and drawing most of its support from former Coalition voters.
Coalition sources said Joyce’s intervention was part of a wider pattern in which One Nation figures have raised the prospect of co-operation while also seeking to put pressure on Taylor.
Alex Antic, the most senior Liberal to call for collaboration with Hanson, advocated some form of political tie-up two days after becoming president of the South Australian Liberal division.
Non-government MPs who provide confidence and supply agree to support a government in votes on whether it retains the parliament’s confidence and in authorising spending, allowing it to continue governing without holding a majority.
