Barnaby Joyce has held out the prospect that the Nationals could switch positions and support an inquiry into the banks, but not before the New England byelection this weekend.



Joyce, who faces the voters on Saturday, told Guardian Australia the National party was “only too willing” to consider a number of issues, including a banking inquiry, after the results of the byelection were known.

He said he didn’t want to “front run” the National party by expressing a personal view on whether an inquiry into the banks should proceed but said: “It is always the right of the party room to bring up these issues.”

The Nationals are due to meet in Canberra next Monday before the resumption of the House of Representatives next week.

The Nationals senator Barry O’Sullivan has said the Liberal National party’s poor showing in the Queensland state election reinforced his intention to push forward with his private member’s bill for a parliamentary inquiry into the banks.

That bill looks likely to pass the Senate, given that the proposal has in-principle support from Labor and the Greens, but O’Sullivan has flagged a discussion in the National party room on the issue.

The Liberal National party MP George Christensen has signalled he will cross the floor to support a banking inquiry after the New England byelection on 2 December, but it is unclear whether the proposal has the numbers in the lower house.

If the Nationals were to formally shift position on the issue next week, then an inquiry would have the numbers to proceed.

A formal shift in position could also head off any move by the lower house dissident Christensen to quit the National party and sit on the crossbench.

Some of Christensen’s colleagues in the government believe the member for Dawson is setting himself up on the banking issue to part ways with the Nationals, a move with significant implications for the government’s already tenuous numbers in the lower house.

Some government MPs also believe the Liberal party may suddenly flip on the banking issue after discussing whether to hold an inquiry during last week’s cabinet meeting.

But speaking to reporters in Wollongong on Monday, Malcolm Turnbull said the issue of an inquiry into the banks was “not even remotely the issue in the Queensland election”.

Turnbull continued to insist that the election in Queensland “was fought very much on state issues between state leaders and state parties”.

With the Nationals on the warpath after the Queensland election at the weekend, and One Nation eroding the LNP’s primary vote, some Queensland Liberals warned their colleagues to hold their nerve.

The Liberal MP Warren Entsch on Monday rejected the Nationals’ calls for a banking commission of inquiry, suggesting that a victims’ compensation scheme to be announced by the treasurer is a better way to deal with rip-offs in the sector.