It’s hard not to feel sorry for
Barnaby Joyce. He’s a political Icarus who flew in from the bush to
shake up the Big City establishment. He wanted the Big Pond more fairly
shared around. He aimed high but flew too low in the end and landed in
the drink with a resounding splash.

The result of all the
theatrics is what politics specialises in: a compromise that satisfies
no-one. Joyce and the Nationals get their telecommunications slush
fund, which they will now be expected to sell furiously in their
electorates. John Howard gets Telstra off his plate, providing the
stock market holds up and can absorb it without burning investors’
fingers. And Telstra contemplates life as a busted monopoly.

But
Joyce’s problem now is managing expectations in his constituency.
During the past few weeks he has been flooded with emails and calls of
support from rural folk with the message: “We’re with you, Barnaby.
Don’t let them sell Telstra.”

Which is not what he was about.
Realising that, John Howard was determined to steamroll through the
sale and Joyce took the decision to fold early rather than endure the
continued attention of Howard’s attack dogs. The sight of Bill
Heffernan chasing him through a corridor after Joyce left yesterday’s
joint party meeting was enough to confirm that.

Joyce’s crime
was that he didn’t want to be captured by the media cameras associating
himself with the decision to sell Telstra. Well, you can’t blame him,
can you, particularly given his fleeting friends in Labor are now leading
the charge to crucify “backdown Barnaby.”

Another
independent-minded country representative, Tony Windsor, showed
yesterday what this Government likes to do to politicians with the guts
to stand up and buck the party line. Windsor, the Independent MP for
New England, was thrown out of the House for 24 hours for saying this
about the Telstra deal: “The National Party is not only prepared to
offer bribes, but to accept them.”

The deputy speaker who threw
him out was the National Party’s Ian Causley. Later, Windsor recalled
that on May 22 1996, Causley himself told the Parliament that the Labor
Party had bribed maritime unions over the sale of ANL. He was allowed
to stay in the chamber.

Windsor himself is far from happy with
Joyce, who he says has gone from “the Messiah of the bush” to the “Judas
Iscariot of Queensland.” But he must understand the pressure Barnaby
has come under. This past fortnight the government has shown
independent-spirited MPs once more that it will ridicule you, bully
you, throw you out of Parliament – do whatever is necessary to force
you to toe the line.

Barnaby, of course, has courted the media
as part of a whirlwind campaign that has resulted in countless glowing
headlines and gushing stories about the bold maverick from Queensland.
Now he’s won a kind of victory, but it’s too early to say if his
constituents will thank him for it.

On Tuesday, just before his
maiden speech, Joyce held a picfac for the cameras with his family in a
Senate courtyard. I asked his wife, Natalie, how she felt about the
media blitz surrounding her husband. She blinked and pondered a moment,
then uttered one word: “Bizarre.” That’s the best political analysis
we’ve had from Canberra all week.