Of course there is a chance that when Barnaby Joyce is replaced as the Nationals leader and deputy prime minister on Monday he will return to the backbench to quietly serve the people of his seat and the interests of his party.

This is what one would once have expected of a party leader, but it is not what people are expecting of Joyce. Loosed of the (slack) bonds of cabinet solidarity, we can now expect Joyce to join Tony Abbott on the backbench and focus on two of his key concerns - Malcolm Turnbull, and the causes that Malcolm Turnbull stands for.

When he first left Queensland for a lower house seat in New England, Joyce quoted Cicero in his inaugural speech. “Of all the occupations by which gain is secured,” he declared, “none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a free man.”

This notion that his constituency has an unfettered moral right to the endless exploitation of Australian resources has long been a key theme of Joyce’s.

He put it in more familiar terms before an errant hot mike during a political meeting in a pub last year.