Fellow coalition outcast and good friend Jacinta Nampijinpa Price insists she will wait and see rather than accept scuttlebutt that Barnaby Joyce is about to throw his lot in with Pauline Hanson.
The former party leader abruptly announced his split with the Nationals on Saturday, citing an irreparably broken relationship with its leadership.
He says he won’t recontest his northern NSW seat of New England at the next election.
“I am free to now consider all options as to what I do next,” Mr Joyce said in a statement distributed to branch members then rapidly leaked to media organisations.
Senator Price, who also quit the minor coalition partner to join the Liberals only to be demoted from cabinet, declined to speculate when asked what Mr Joyce’s likely move would be.
“I’d prefer to wait and see,” she told Sky News.
“I’m a good mate of Barnaby’s but I’ll wait and see what’s real and what’s just another attempt to … keep this chatter and division going on with regard to the coalition.”
Word broke on Friday that Mr Joyce was in advanced discussions with Senator Hanson about a potential switch to her One Nation party.
Senator Hanson reportedly told the Sydney Morning Herald she would be happy to entertain the move if Mr Joyce was keen.
His statement on Saturday made no allusion to the possibility, only that he saw no point continuing in the role he was in.
“The atmospherics in the party room, where I am seated in the far corner of the coalition in the chamber, means I am seen and now turning into a discordant note,” he said.
“That is not who I want to be.”
Mr Joyce was demoted from the party’s front bench by current leader David Littleproud earlier in 2025.
His departure is the latest display of discontent within federal coalition ranks after the worst election result in its 81-year history.
Frictions emerged following Senator Price’s relegation and the resignation of Andrew Hastie from the shadow ministry over policy differences.
Like Mr Joyce, he had been an outspoken critic of net-zero emissions reduction goals and repeatedly called on his colleagues to abandon their support of them.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged on Saturday that he heard the noise about Mr Joyce and One Nation from afar.
“You know the coalition is bad if not even Barnaby Joyce wants to be part of it,” he told reporters in New York where he is spruiking Australia’s renewable energy potential to big business.
“What all of this internal disunity shows is that the coalition hasn’t changed a bit, they haven’t learned a thing, they are more divisive and more divided than ever.”
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