NATIONALS Senate leader Barnaby Joyce has backed away from his plan to switch to the lower house after the Liberal Party spurned his proposal for the Nationals to adopt a Liberal senator who would replace him.
The about-face by Senator Joyce will strain relations between the Coalition partners after the Liberal National Party's poor showing in the Queensland election in March.
An angry Senator Joyce claimed the Liberals had reneged on a deal that would have allowed him to vacate his Senate spot.
Liberal sources said newly elected federal party president Alan Stockdale had vetoed a plan to have Queensland Liberal senator Russell Trood join the parliamentary Nationals in Canberra.
Mr Stockdale declined to comment yesterday.
Senator Joyce had been planning to switch to the House of Representatives since being urged to do so by former prime minister John Howard at a lunch in Sydney late last year.
The former Nationals and Liberals in Queensland agreed on a grandfathering clause in the LNP constitution to protect sitting MPs. The move was in response to Liberal concerns that former Nationals would use their superior numbers in the new party to displace ex-Liberal MPs.
The clause meant that Senator Trood, currently in the unwinnable fourth position on the LNP ticket, would take Senator Joyce's third spot rather than another National if Senator Joyce left the Senate, depleting the Nationals' already diminished numbers in Canberra.
Senator Joyce had proposed that Senator Trood effectively join his parliamentary party by sitting in the Nationals' partyroom.
When told by The Australian of the Liberals' decision to reject the plan, Senator Joyce said he would not now be contesting a lower house seat. "The deal is off as far as I am concerned," Senator Joyce said.
"I can't walk away and leave the party in a worse position than how I found it."
Senator Joyce was scathing of the Liberals' move.
"All we were asking was that for an hour a week during parliamentary sittings, Russell Trood sit with our party," he said.
"If the Liberals have a philosophical belief that they can't do that, then I have a philosophical choice about staying where I am."
Senator Joyce said the Liberals expected him to take all the risks.
"I would have been the one risking my seat in federal parliament by going to the lower house and having my wife asking what the hell I was doing," he said.
"I'm not going to put my arse on the line for someone who doesn't want to make a small sacrifice."
LNP sources said Senator Trood had given Senator Joyce a firm undertaking in private discussions that he was prepared to sit with the parliamentary Nationals.
Senator Trood declined to return The Australian's calls.
However, the senator's factional Queensland Liberal ally, former state president Bob Carroll, said Senator Trood would never join the parliamentary Nationals.
"I would stake my life on Russell only ever agreeing to sit in the Liberals' partyroom," Mr Carroll said. "Russell is not a National. The reason the grandfathering clause was in the Constitution was to try to stop the Nationals taking over the Liberals."
Mr Carroll said the spat had implications for the next federal poll.
"The federal Nationals and Liberals will be trying to conduct their own campaigns in Queensland when they are supposedly one party. It should be a nice old mess."