A ‘furious’ cattle farmer wants to be Nationals leader. But few expect the party to become a Boyce club

Who is Colin Boyce? The Flynn MP says the Nationals have been reduced to ‘the nothing party’ after Coalition’s implosion. Photograph: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

When the Taroom cattle farmer Colin Einar Boyce was elected to the Queensland parliament in 2017, his strongest opposition came from One Nation.

Three years later, Boyce’s plain-spoken first term as a Liberal National party backbencher – which included crossing the floor on a mining rehabilitation bill and a climate speech that claimed we should “celebrate” global heating – had won over One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.