Don Baker trims Barnaby Joyce’s hair every now and then. When he’s not doing men’s cuts in his barber shop just off Peel Street in Tamworth, he’s a professional shooter. Baker’s business card says kangaroo harvester.



Baker has a poster in his shop window spruiking the Shooters party, which has been busy hoovering up rural disaffection in the New South Wales bush. Taking in the obvious prompts, the propaganda in the window, the trophies on the wall, I ask Baker whether he’s disappointed the Shooters are an apparent no-show in the New England by-election. “Yeah, a little bit,” he says.

But Joyce is someone he can get behind. “He’s all for guns too, isn’t he?” Baker says, half statement, half question.

I’m not sure how seriously into firearms Joyce is, but it seems impolite to demur, surrounded by all the taxidermy – the snake, the parrot, the wild pig. “I don’t mind the bloke,” Baker says. “He speaks his mind. A lot of politicians don’t”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Don Baker in his barber shop in Tamworth, surrounded by hunting trophies. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

A little further along Peel Street, there’s a small business with a very different vibe. Sue Ellis owns a women’s shoe shop called Heeled. While Baker’s shop is crammed with hunting trophies, the Ellis emporium is high heels and accessories.

Ellis is irritated at the byelection, and the dual citizenship controversy that precipitated it. “He was born here,” the shop owner says. “Why are we even talking about this?”

Ellis’s sister, Lyn Ranclaud, is in the shop today, helping out. “Look, if we go back far enough, no one was born here, apart from the Aborigines,” Ranclaud says. “It’s just a waste of money.”

Ranclaud lowers her voice. Customers are browsing around the shop. “I feel sorry for Jim and Marie, Barnaby’s mother and father, because Jim’s not well. All this is taking a very big toll on Jim. They are very upset, and I feel sorry for Jim, because of him, this has all happened.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barnaby Joyce talks to Sue Ellis (back) and her sister Lyn Ranclaud during a street walk in Peel Street, Tamworth. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Ellis chastises her sister for being indiscreet, motioning at my digital recorder. It’s OK, I reassure her, this isn’t exactly spilling deep vault family secrets. We all know Joyce went to the high court because of the New Zealand citizenship he picked up from his father by descent. It’s entirely unsurprising that the deputy prime minister’s elderly parents would be upset.

I change the subject, directing my question to Ellis. Does she think Joyce is heading for a thumping victory? This is pretty much the national take on New England – that this contest isn’t much of a contest.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barnaby Joyce enjoys a beer at the Nemingha pub on Tuesday. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Ellis shakes her head. She isn’t sure.

Ranclaud cuts in. “I wouldn’t vote for Tony Windsor anyhow,” she says, with lip curled in distaste. He sister frowns again. “He’s not standing,” Ellis counsels. She continues as if she hasn’t been interrupted.

“I don’t know what will happen,” she says. “People sometimes do strange things. Anyway, this whole thing is just a storm in a teacup. Just get it over with. Stop wasting our money and get out and do what you are being paid to do, instead of all the backstabbing.” Ellis doesn’t know why a dual citizenship should create all this fuss when a man is born in the Tamworth base hospital.

Joyce seen as victim of a crook system

Out at the Nemingha pub, which is a sleepy neighbourhood watering hole on the southern fringe of town – except on a Thursday night, when it boasts topless barmaids – a group of men have gathered for a sundowner after work.

One is convinced the citizenship dramas have been cooked up by Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong. Wong, he declares, is a “lesbian and a vegetarian”. I point out that I know Wong eats meat, so his intel in this instance isn’t entirely on the money. He seems perplexed by this news, and uncertain whether I’m pulling his leg.

The group at Nemingah see Joyce’s travails as a stitch-up, some pointless intrigue connected to the political nonsense from Canberra they try to tune out of. In this version of events, the deputy prime minister is the victim of a crook system.

I ask the group whether they think Joyce should have checked his family background, given all political candidates are required to do so before contesting. It’s just a basic administrative check. Not that complicated. They shrug, unconvinced.

A couple of these men went to the University of New England, and roomed at St Albert’s College, a residential college on the campus, where Joyce lived in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These blokes are younger than the candidate, they know him only as the politician who shakes their hands at the saleyards, or down on Peel Street. He’s not an intimate, or a mate, but they feel he is one of them.

For these men, that’s the point. Joyce is their representative, from the local clans, who somehow rose to be the deputy prime minister of Australia. So who cares about the constitution? Who can be bothered with that in the real world? They are irritated not with Joyce, but with what they see as arcane process. Joyce’s good old boy credentials are good enough in the bar at Nemingah.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barnaby Joyce meets farmers around Duri near Tamworth during a wheat-judging competition. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Further south again, at Duri, a group of farmers have gathered in the wheat paddocks for a crop judging in the late afternoon sun, with Joyce the guest of honour. The farmers hang back while he ponders wheat samples. Later in the week, he’s shearing sheep. Whip-cracking and bareback horseriding can’t be far off.

This group is disappointed with Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals. They think the government is seriously underwhelming, but they don’t blame the local member, despite the fact he is a linchpin in the Canberra operation.

Joyce does the job, speaks the language of the locals, and he has clout inside the government. This is important to these men. They seem to think their insider is outsider enough to be acceptable.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barnaby Joyce has a chat with a farmer in a shed in Duri. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

I tell them in the normal circumstances of a byelection, if voters don’t like the incumbent government, they tend to give it a whacking. One of the farmers laughs, and predicts Joyce in December will do better than he did at the 2016 election.

There’s nowhere to park a protest vote, one of the farmers says, with one eye on Joyce, who is now posing for pictures in the middle of the wheat field, trying to keep the flies out of his mouth.

One of these farmers was involved in bankrolling Tony Windsor, the independent who routed the Nationals to take New England back in 2001. But Windsor did a deal with Labor in that minority parliament, one farmer notes.

The conclave shake their heads in unison, as if it’s just obvious this is reprehensible behaviour, traitorous behaviour, a capital offence. Windsor, another notes, has also become a bit nasty. Again, there is collective shaking of heads.

What about the Armidale independent Rob Taber? Taber is currently the only independent who has confirmed he will run in New England. The Duri group is underwhelmed by the Armidale man. “That guy runs every election,” one says.

There’s a small fire visible on the western horizon, and given the wind has some tempo to it, we all watch, as the photographers sweat and strain to capture the campaigning citizen Joyce, who is shaded under the brim of his hat.

Tony Windsor rules out taking on Barnaby Joyce in New England byelection Read more

Again, I’m struck by the fact that in the collective consciousness of this group, Joyce is the victim of a system they feel alienated from, a Canberra pantomime that feels altogether unworldly, and stupendously stupid.

Tamworth is the major population centre in the federal seat of New England. The political wisdom in the electorate is if you can’t carry Tamworth, with its 60,998 residents, you can’t hold the seat. The town, based on this short field survey, in the opening week of the byelection, is a sighing symphony of sympathy, even though Joyce is at fault.

They are mad as hell about politics, but they are not blaming Joyce, and the candidate is not about provoking them with the extraneous facts. “Ah well, it’s the law,” Joyce says, when he’s stopped on the street by residents who can’t comprehend why they are in a byelection.

One woman in a nursing home at Manilla, just out of Tamworth, asks him whether he’s worked out whether he is Chinese yet. “I think I might be a bit gypsy,” Joyce replies, to general thigh-slapping, acclaim.

Back in Duri, the verdict is simple. “He speaks for us,” one of the group says, shutting down the conversation, and moving in search of the cool of a farm shed.

The byelection is a strange contest, reflective of the unhinged political times we inhabit. Viewed from Canberra, it looks all over bar the shouting, a dead rubber. But up close, this contest is more combustible and unpredictable.

The favourite to win, “citizen Joyce” as the deputy prime minister has taken to calling himself, has a hail-fellow-well-met smile plastered on, but he’s in a saturnine state: a bit contemplative, a lot combative.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest To the people of New England, Barnaby Joyce does the job and speaks their language. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

In one sense he’s relaxed, because he’s where he likes to be: off script, on the hustings, off the long run, unshackled from the relentless, disciplined routines of the leadership group, and the cabinet meetings, and the conference calls. He’s free to indulge his wild streak. He’s lobbed bombs at the Liberals all week, which goes down well locally.

But despite the outward appearance of amusement and adventurism and bonhomie, Joyce, who of course holds the fate of the government’s one-seat lower house majority in his hands, is also pensive, and hyper vigilant. The load is heavy, and while the campaign mask is on, he doesn’t excel in making his load look light.

‘One alternative is, obviously, not standing’

Joyce’s personal life has become part of the conversation around the electorate. An elliptical report in the Daily Telegraph in late October noted that he was “struggling with issues that have affected his marriage of 24 years”. Party sources were quoted saying that a “scandal” in Joyce’s private life and the existence of a “dirt file” were upsetting conservative voters.

Locals tell me the community is alight with talk. Out on the hustings, he’s periodically quizzed about his personal life in polite and mildly euphemistic fashion, halting questions from reporters which he dead bats. Out in the paddock at Duri, one of the farmers asks him where he is living. It’s just small talk, but Joyce steps around the inquiry. “I’m sort of living everywhere at the moment,” he says, lightly.

We grab a bite at the Safari Club, a restaurant in Brisbane Street, Tamworth. The tables in the steak joint are packed in tight; privacy is impossible.

A couple sitting at the neighbouring table lean over to offer Joyce a private aircraft to fly around the electorate. When Joyce gets up to talk to a group in another part of the restaurant, one of the waitresses comes over and whispers that she follows politics, so eavesdropping on our conversation is really, really interesting.

In this environment, I feel the closeness Joyce must feel in a community where eyes are trained on the candidate. I know this town well. I made my own journey to adulthood in these same streets. The over-sized northern New South Wales sky blazes like a spiritual home. My mother built a house here. I learned to swim in the town pool. My grandmother rests in the local cemetery, as does one of my dearest school friends.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barnaby Joyce’s personal life has become part of the conversation around the electorate. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

So I know the town, its reflexive conservatism. Tamworth is a bigger place now than the small town of my youth; these days it bustles rather than slumbers, but it remains a community where everyone knows everything about everyone, or at least aspires to, if only to avoid faux pas in polite company.

In this mildly excruciating fishbowl, I ask Joyce about his private life, given the subject is trailing him like a low cloud. Has he done anything that he shouldn’t have? “My personal life is my personal business,” he says, returning to his food.

Is this a legitimate subject for debate in a political campaign? “Absolutely not. It’s personal.”

“The other thing is people in New England hate you talking about it. They think it’s personal.” Has anyone raised it with you negatively during the campaign? “Not one person. There but for the grace of God go I,” he says.

I divert to other subjects. Does he really want to be here, fighting this byelection? In the opening days of the campaign he told a journalist he’d thought about quitting. I wasn’t surprised by this confession. On the day before the high court ruling, he drifted around the parliament like a ghost. I had a strange sense he was on the way out, even though this was practically impossible, given the government’s lower house position.

I’ve got to get these things done. There’s nothing worse than promising and not delivering Barnaby Joyce

“I want to fight this byelection,” Joyce says. “In any decision, you always look at alternatives, but that’s not new, I’ve been looking at alternatives in my political career from literally the first term. Only a fool would go forward without thinking of alternatives. One alternative is, obviously, not standing.”

But he’s standing, and staying because “a lot of the things I’ve fought for in this seat are only half delivered: the APVMA [pesticides and veterinary medicine authority], Dungowan dam, even the roads – I’ve got the money for them but they are not actually built yet, not finished.

“I’ve got to get these things done. There’s nothing worse than promising and not delivering, and I know damn well if I disappeared they would be undelivered very, very quickly.”

I ask him whether he will stand at the next federal election, assuming he’s not swept away in this byelection. He says he will. Will he lead the National party in the next term of parliament? “I would listen to my colleagues but I always have a very strong view of succession planning. I come out of accountancy practices among other things. One of the biggest problems we have on the land is not having organised succession plans.”

Obviously this is a clear signal that he’s looking at a changing of the guard. He digs in behind the idea.

“I’m never so proud to think I’m going to be the boss forever. You always need to work out who is coming through and how you can help them, because true success is handing the job over, not holding on to the job forever.”

He won’t be drawn on what or who this succession plan might entail, but it’s well known in Canberra that Joyce is personally close to the Queensland senator Matt Canavan, who once worked for Joyce, and who survived his brush with the high court.

I ask Joyce whether his high court troubles are now fully behind him. Is he confident, for example, that his ministerial decision-making in this period could withstand legal challenge? Could any of these decisions be actionable? “Nup,” he says, flatly. Why not? He says decisions he made were cabinet decisions, collective decisions, not personal frolics. He says if Labor wants to try that on, to resort to the law on a constitutional premise, then bring it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joyce says true success is handing over the job, and not holding on to it forever. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

“This goes to the political ineptness of the Labor party,” Joyce says. “This is yet another parlour game.”

He warms steadily to this theme. “Have you seen this town? They hate that. ‘Is that why I should vote for you Bill [Shorten]? That has nothing to do with my life.’ It’s just a bullshit parlour game, played by people who have been in that crazy boarding school for too long.”

So any legal action would backfire? “Absolutely,” he says. “People would be furious. You’ve got to get out more often and talk to people. People really hate that shit.

“Look, argue whether you have a road here or here. If you argue about things which actually matter in people’s lives rather than saying, ‘mate, I think we’ve got you on subsection Q4 part B Roman numeral two’, people say I haven’t got a fucking clue what you are talking about – but all I know is you are a dweeb.”

Canberra commotion distant thunder in Tamworth

Back in Canberra, the government’s citizenship saga is far from over. While we drive around the electorate, the citizenship story takes new twists and turns, shaking the already shaky government.

Viewed from Tamworth, this was distant thunder. In Peel Street, the National party machine swung into gear. Signage arrived and Joyce’s election office was kitted out, a shallow shopfront sandwiched between Tizzy’s Hair Salon and the Blue Flame Indian restaurant.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Workers erect signage outside the campaign headquarters for Barnaby Joyce in Tamworth. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Citizen Joyce disappeared midweek to shoot campaign ads. Our request to document the shoot was politely declined.

While the National machine ignored the artillery in Canberra and rolled into campaign mode, there were stirrings in other quarters. The bush telegraph that connects the rural independents of the region worked overtime.

Thus far, Joyce’s only declared competition is Labor’s David Ewings, from Scone in the southern part of the electorate, and the Armidale-based independent Taber, who has run at the last two elections.

But political contacts in New England tell me they think One Nation is still eyeing the seat, and others are certainly mulling their options.

The Greens may run. A fellow by the name of Ian Britza is said to be driving across the Nullabor to represent the Australian Country party. Dick Smith’s Sustainable Australia party may also field a candidate.

Nominations close next Thursday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon with their candidate for New England, David Ewings. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

The bush telegraph is also alive with talk of a high-profile late starter, an independent with the potential to deliver an upset. The talk is this person is a cleanskin well known to Joyce, who lives in the Tamworth hinterland. No one will cough up the name because the candidate is still deliberating.

Peter Mailer is another of the non-major party players mulling his options. Mailer, a farmer from Boggabilla and a former chairman of Grain Producers Australia, has set up a party called CountryMinded, which is pitching to progressive farmers, people on the land concerned about climate change.

Mailer is inclined to run, but hasn’t yet committed. One problem is simple logistics – he’s in the middle of harvesting 6,000 acres of crops. “The only person who has time to campaign in the district right now is Barnaby Joyce,” he notes sardonically.

Barnaby Joyce: 'Dopey' Liberal and Labor MPs let Nationals take citizenship rap Read more

Mailer is deeply irritated by the Nationals’ messaging in New England – that Joyce is a victim of a system, rather than a politician who just failed to do his homework. “I don’t think people should be feeling too sorry for Barnaby,” he says.

He thinks if the current field doesn’t gain some depth, there’s a danger Joyce could be re-elected without much of a contest.

Mailer says the voters in New England have to think strategically. A government in Canberra hangs by a thread. That means opportunity for the people of New England, if they sent an independent back to Canberra. The government would need to cut deals with any independent to remain in power. That would make that independent a very influential player.

Mailer says there are “glaring holes in Joyce’s record. He doesn’t understand the linkage between agricultural performance and the community more generally”. Mailer says he just can’t fathom an agriculture minister who produces a white paper in his portfolio that fails to mention climate change. “I am a farmer, and I’m desperately concerned about climate change,” he says.

By midweek we scale the Moonbi ranges, and the bucolic open plateau that leads to Armidale, to talk to Taber, who runs a solar business in Taylor Street. His campaign operation is rudimentary to say the least. Taber says he doesn’t intend to spend much money, having been burned in previous elections spending too much. He thinks he can make it a contest by connecting with people and talking about issues.

Taber wants to highlight the Coalition’s lack of support for a royal commission into the banking industry, which he thinks is a red-hot issue in the bush, and the lack of the national broadband network in Tamworth. His Armidale solar business was the first business in the country to connect to the NBN – a service Windsor brought to Armidale in the period of Labor minority government.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Independent candidate Rob Taber at his shop in Armidale. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Taber is perplexed why the lack of the NBN isn’t a huge issue in Tamworth, given the superior internet service only 100km up the road. “That’s a major issue for Tamworth and Joyce has walked away from it. He’s got to toe the party line. But if I was in Tamworth, I’d be saying, ‘fix this, or you don’t get my vote’.”

I ask Taber to define his personal politics. He says he’s been around politics all his life. “My father stood for the Democratic Labor party and he ran against Ian Sinclair and got 10% of the vote in New England. Sinclair had to rely on his preferences. He didn’t like the way the Country party was heading.”

But what about his own political views? Is he progressive? Is he conservative? “That’s a really hard question to answer,” Taber says.

“I don’t know why we have right and left. I think that’s crazy. I’ve never belonged to a political party, I never even joined the DLP. I just couldn’t see that the system could work when you’ve got two major parties arguing and squabbling and scoring points on each other. It doesn’t work that way in society generally.”

He says there will be no personal stuff, no bomb throwing or muck raking, over the next four weeks. Not from him, in any case. “I think it’s going to be very important to have integrity all the way through, and that’s what I intend to do. I think people are getting really tired of the rubbish. A lot of things are rumours and a lot of things are true. I don’t think people want to know any more.”

Given he’s obliquely referred to the talk about Joyce in Tamworth, I ask him whether he has anything to say about his political rival’s personal life. “I don’t know if any of these allegations are true. I’m not prepared to discuss them.

“The issues for this election are more important to me. That’s the reason for my standing in this election. There is no way we’ll be raising that at any stage. I’ll leave that to others to talk about.”

Taber also has a message for Turnbull, and in the context of this byelection it’s bracing. In the event there’s an upset in New England there would be no minority government agreement.

“I would not support either side. I would be right down the middle,” Taber says.

“They might come to me and say it all hinges on you, you’ve got the balance of power, and my feel on that is they will come to me, and I will say it’s not my problem.

“Why are you going to make it my problem? You go away and sort it out.”

He said Windsor had once given him valuable advice, and he intended to take it. “Tony Windsor said to me once they would never go back to an election, they are terrified of that, so they will sort it out, and I’ll get on with my job.”