It got a bit lost in the uproar over the Labor catastrophe in Queensland, but the truly alarming news from the banana republic this week is that Barnaby Joyce is on the hunt for a lower house seat.

If he pulls it off - and we can be sure he will leave no stone unturned to do it - he would be within striking distance of becoming deputy prime minister in a Tony Abbott government. A shiver runs down the spine just at the thought of this hayseed buffoon at the top of the political heap.

There are a few obstacles in his way. He has admitted he has his eye on the Queensland seat of Maranoa, which includes his home town of St George. This is now held by one Bruce Scott, 69, a colourless cockie and minor minister in the Howard government but who, after 22 years, is likely to resist being pitch-forked out of a job to satisfy Joyce's vaulting ambition.

And, although you might not have noticed it, the Nats already have a party leader in the House of Representatives. Warren Truss, 64, is another Queenslander who has turned bland into an art form, but he is also unlikely to lie down while Joyce drives a combine harvester over the top of him. The fight could get bloody. But what Barnaby wants, Barnaby tends to get.

He and Abbott would be in lock step. Both were educated by the Jesuits at Riverview, the great Catholic boys' school on the banks of the Lane Cove River. While Abbott's roots are sunk in the barren rocks of the nasty old Democratic Labor Party, Joyce is a pork-barrelling Queensland primitive in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen mould. But in the end they converge. Each is an unashamed right-wing populist who will say anything to get elected: stop the boats, axe the tax, climate change is crap, the prime minister is a liar. Sloganeering for the talkback and tabloid masses is so much easier than the unspectacular grind of making public policy.

Even more so than Abbott, Joyce comes with the added baggage of a touchy-feely chumminess with the mining magnates Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart. Last year he flew in Rinehart's private jet as her guest at the sumptuous, three-day wedding of an Indian industrialist in Hyderabad, a frolic he described as ''absolutely mind-blowing''. A few weeks ago he inserted himself into the Rinehart family inheritance feud, revealing that he had written to one of the estranged daughters urging her to drop her case against Mummy.

Imagine it: Barnaby Joyce, MP, the Member for Rinehart and Acting Prime Minister of Australia whenever Abbott slips into the lycra and goes off cycling.

Barnaby's Big Move - Be Very Afraid