{"id":441159,"date":"2026-01-29T16:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/441159\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T16:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:23:07","slug":"a-furious-cattle-farmer-wants-to-be-nationals-leader-but-few-expect-the-party-to-become-a-boyce-club-national-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/441159\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018furious\u2019 cattle farmer wants to be Nationals leader. But few expect the party to become a Boyce club | National party"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Taroom cattle farmer Colin Einar Boyce was elected to the Queensland<\/a> parliament in 2017, his strongest opposition came from One Nation.<\/p>\n

Three years later, Boyce\u2019s plain-spoken first term as a Liberal National party backbencher \u2013 which included crossing the floor<\/a> on a mining rehabilitation bill and a climate speech that claimed we should \u201ccelebrate\u201d global heating \u2013 had won over One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.<\/p>\n

The minor party endorsed Boyce and declined to stand a candidate in his seat of Callide. His vote went up 24%. On ABC radio at the time, Boyce quoted the Chinese military general Sun Tzu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without going to battle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is exactly what I have done in Callide.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week Boyce announced a tilt at the Nationals leadership, claiming he was \u201cfurious\u201d at the implosion of the Coalition<\/a>. He said events in Canberra had left the Nationals \u201cthe nothing party\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not happy about it one little bit,\u201d Boyce told 4CC radio in Gladstone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could have been avoided but it wasn\u2019t, but egos and personalities reign supreme unfortunately. A complete debacle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyce had been a steadfast backer of the former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, who recently defected to One Nation. Despite speculation he would also defect to One Nation<\/a>, Boyce says he won\u2019t leave the party he joined as a 20-year-old in the 1980s, but that it was \u201ca distinct possibility\u201d that others would defect.<\/p>\n

Critics of Boyce \u2013 and there are many, including within his own party \u2013 say his position on the leadership makes little sense. They say he will likely have little support in the party room.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

Boyce was one of seven Nationals MPs who crossed the floor on the hate speech legislation that prompted Nationals resignations from the shadow cabinet, and ultimately caused the Coalition split.<\/p>\n

He says his call for a leadership spill seeks to keep the Coalition together, but has also appeared to endorse a move against the Liberal leader, Sussan Ley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how you salvage it in respect of the Liberal party leadership \u2026 but I\u2019m quite sure the Liberal party people are reviewing the situation,\u201d he told 4CC.<\/p>\n

Boyce left the Queensland parliament in 2022 and won the federal seat of Flynn. In both parliaments, he has been a steadfast opponent of net zero climate policies and renewable energy.<\/p>\n

Boyce is congratulated by colleagues after his first speech in the House of Representatives in July 2022. Photograph: Mike Bowers\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

He said of his decision to cross the floor over a bill to establish a mining rehabilitation commissioner: \u201cFor me it was the Alamo \u2013 make a stand, fix bayonets and over the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the 2020 state election, Boyce ran Facebook advertisements calling renewable energy a \u201cfantasy\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The following year, after an explosion at the Callide coal-fired power station, he said the argument against building new coal plants was \u201cdriven by the mind-numbing, eco-Marxist millennials and upper middle-class \u2018wokes\u2019 who have been indoctrinated with some quasi-religious belief that coal is bad and carbon dioxide is poisoning the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n

Boyce is a founding member of the Saltbush Club<\/a> that promotes climate science denial and claims there is no climate emergency. Before the 2024 election, Guardian Australia revealed that Boyce told a group of climate science deniers that blackouts were \u201ca big political opportunity\u201d. He also said he had urged fellow MPs to adopt a \u201cdo nothing strategy\u201d that would allow power outages and build opposition to net zero policies.<\/p>\n

Boyce, 62, has never previously been viewed by his colleagues \u2013 in Queensland or Canberra \u2013 as a serious candidate for the frontbench. His opponents have pointed this out, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will at least give Colin Boyce his due,\u201d the former Queensland deputy premier Cameron Dick said in the state parliament in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cColin Boyce was a crank, but at least he never pretended to be anything else. Colin Boyce was a member of the LNP who gave comfort to those who deny science and spout conspiracy theories, but he did so from the backbench.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Taroom cattle farmer Colin Einar Boyce was elected to the Queensland parliament in 2017, his strongest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-441159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}