“I get asked this question all the time,” he said.
“If you say there’ll be no leadership change ever, then you turn out to be a liar when there is.”
But he said he would not be challenging for the leadership.
“If somebody else wants to make a call they can do it, but I’m not going to be putting my hand up and calling a spill. There’s your answer,” he said.
Mr Joyce said it was hypocritical of politicians to claim they would never run against a current leader.
“You always say the same thing and people always find it remarkable – if there’s a spill, if you stand and win, you stand and win, if you stand and lose, you stand and lose,” he said.
“And if I go, like every other person, ‘Oh no, my name is Joel Fitzgibbon, and I would never challenge Anthony Albanese’, you just sit back and go, b——-.”
Mr Fitzgibbon, the Labor MP for Hunter, has attracted his own leadership speculation after he called for his party to commit more heavily to supporting the coal industry, which is a major industry in his seat.
Mr Joyce stepped down from the Nationals leadership in February 2018 following revelations he had an affair with a former staffer.
He challenged Mr McCormack for the leadership in February 2020, but lost.
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