• Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has reclaimed the positions of party leader and Deputy Prime Minister after a Monday spill.
• In defeating Michael McCormack, Joyce returns to the role three years after stepping down.
• Recent history suggests Joyce will rock the Coalition’s boat, with unorthodox views on climate policy, debt and budgetary measures.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Barnaby Joyce reclaimed the position of National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister in a Monday morning leadership spill, more than three years after stepping down from the role amid scrutiny of his personal life, and an ultimately inconclusive investigation into a sexual harassment allegation leveled against him.

ABC reports Joyce bested former leader Michael McCormack in a tightly-contested party room vote, finalising a return to the National’s top position over a year in the making.

Joyce resigned from the role in February 2018 after becoming the subject of a sexual harassment allegation, which he strenuously denies.

The Member for New England said he would return to the backbench as an internal investigation took place. The NSW Nationals undertook that investigation, but was unable to reach a determination over the allegation.

His resignation also coincided with a separate and intense focus on his personal life, and the revelation he had an affair with political staffer, Vikki Campion, while married.

Joyce will front the media in Canberra this afternoon.

He returns to the leadership position as the Nationals shore up their support ahead of a looming federal election — and his return to one of Canberra’s most influential position suggests the Coalition will soon be rocked by debates on key climatic and economic issues.

There is growing speculation that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is destined to announce a net zero emissions target for 2050, bringing Australia into line with other developed nations, but Joyce’s presence may influence those backroom discussions.

Joyce has fiercely backed coal as a continual fuel source for cheap energy production, and this February called on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, entrusted by the Federal Government to invest $10 billion in green initiatives, to actively direct money to coal-powered projects.

The 54-year-old made headlines on Christmas 2019 for claiming that God had the ultimate say in climate change.

The Coalition party room could reasonably expect Joyce to critique key components of the federal government’s economic agenda. After Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s big-spending 2021-2022 budget, Joyce didn’t see the purported benefits of continued fiscal support, but expressed concerns over mounting levels of government debt.

His influence has been felt in other landmark policy changes over the past few months, with Joyce opposing a change to Australia’s superannuation legislation which would have given the federal government veto power over a superannuation fund’s investments.

Joyce himself telegraphed his boat-rocking intentions back in January 2021, when he penned an editorial in The Australiandecrying the Coalition’s “marriage of convenience”.

“The Nationals are berated if they talk to their constituency on pertinent issues at odds with the conditions of Coalition policy, which is really just Liberal policy,” Joyce wrote.

“Coal-fired power stations, manufacturing, mining, a better deal for farmers on the Murray-Darling, decentralisation, senators appointed by regions not states, environmental laws that handcuff farmers; all are muffled or mute.”

Don’t expect that muteness to last much longer.

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