Katina Curtis: Will Barnaby Joyce the maverick blow it all up one last time?

Barnaby Joyce has styled himself as a maverick practically since he first set foot in Parliament House nearly 21 years ago.

As a young gun senator for Queensland in the final years of the Howard government, he quickly gained a reputation for being outspoken and unafraid to cross the floor when his views clashed with his party’s.

He’s the all-time seventh top floor crosser in the Federal Parliament (although his 28 votes against his own side pales in comparison to mid-century Tasmanian Liberal Reg Wright’s 150).

In swapping to the Lower House, this reputation helped ensure another independent candidate didn’t succeed Tony Windsor in New England.

His supporters backed him in again and again, even during the dual citizenship by-election when rumours about his infidelity shifted to open secret in the seat.

This term he’s bowled up a private member’s bill to repeal anything mentioning the 2050 net zero target despite loud insistence from the Coalition leadership that climate policy is still under review.

Even now, Joyce prides himself on being the type to call a spade a bloody shovel — although his string of off-colour invective during question time is increasingly less tolerated in the contemporary parliament.

So it’s hardly surprising he’s keeping it up as he appears to be on his way out.

The outsider who fought his way up to become deputy prime minister — twice — is now so fed up with his party he’s openly toying with jumping ship to the Nationals’ one-time sworn enemy One Nation.

Pauline Hanson has been actively courting him to join her.

Joyce confirmed this on Monday, but wouldn’t rule it in or out despite being given ample opportunity.

“I am free to now consider all options as to what I do next,” he wrote in a letter to Nationals members over the weekend, announcing he wouldn’t contest New England again.

It’s not the usual approach to retirement.

But there are many Liberals who wouldn’t be sad to see Joyce go.

The senior Coalition party has bent over backwards to accommodate the faction-riddled Nationals and the populism of Joyce, and while the Nats loudly proclaim their standing has held up (despite losing a seat in each house in May), the Liberals have gone backwards.

Labor campaigns deliberately linked Joyce with Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton in the cities, reminding them of a Trump-style populism that dragged the Liberals into a cultural mud pit, Kos Samaras says.

“He’s spent years trying to sell typewriters to a touchscreen world, mistaking his own noise for persuasion and his own nostalgia for a national strategy,” the Redbridge pollster observed.

The question for the old maverick now has to be — as one party colleague observed — will he blow it all up one last time and become the Mark Latham of the Nationals?

And will any other frustrated colleagues risk following?