Is Barnaby Joyce the right person to lead a political party in 2021?
It is hard to believe that this year, of all years, a political party would elect a pants man as leader. Yet here we are, 2021, the year which brought us powerhouse Brittany Higgins and brought down former attorney-general Christian Porter  and the Nationals have reJoyced, with Barnaby Joyce elected leader of the Nationals in place of the charmless Michael McCormack. The party did not even blink. Or think. I cant think of a person less suited to lead a party in disarray, or even array, in 2021, although Tony Abbott would also be bad. Here are the reasons why Barnaby Joyce is a no good, very bad choice. Barnaby Joyce has returned to the leadership of the Nationals. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen  1. In 2018, former West Australian Rural Woman of the Year Catherine Marriott revealed she made a sexual harassment allegation against Joyce. They had an internal party investigation. The federal body sent it to the state branch. Joyces own team investigated Joyce and found it was unable to make a determination about the allegation because of insufficient evidence. The branch refused to release the final report, Joyce has denied harassing Marriott and claimed the allegations were spurious and defamatory. I havent heard hes sued Marriott. Still. As Marriott said at the time: The party never had the external processes in place to deal with a complaint of sexual harassment by a Member of Parliament ... my complaint was handled internally by NSW National Party executive with no professional external expert brought in at any stage to handle the matter. It would be like getting members of the Australian Club to investigate sexism and misogyny. This is the guy the Nationals have elected to run their party in the same year as we have Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins holed up at Parliament House to try to sort through the mess exposed by former staffer Higgins. No process, no judgment. Speaking of staffers ...