The Australian’s Labor plant, Troy Bramston, launched a feral attack on the Member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, because he fell off a pot plant in suburban Canberra after he had had a few too many, then abused his mobile phone.
New column: Barnaby Joyce should do everyone a favour and quit parliament without delay. How long must we endure this debasement of our politics by a man so utterly unworthy of public trust and responsibility?
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Well blow me down with a feather.
Bramston urged resignation from Parliament and spoke of standards. Well, we should be talking about the standards of all MPs, especially those with power – too much power – and dumbo journalists who don’t see the real issues from the rubbish. Trust and responsibility? Where to start? Well, we could try these.
· Being tyrannical;
· Not resisting public servants’ agendas;
· Crushing rights and freedom;
· Shutting our borders because of a mild flu;
· Destroying small business as a class;
· Breaking promises every single day;
· Doing things in government never mentioned in election campaigns;
· Enacting policies hated by the electorate (mass immigration);
· Wasting taxpayer money;
· Dividing the nation with racist referendums;
· Selling off core infrastructure to foreigners like the Chinese Communist Party;
· Endlessly seeking to solve non-problems with non-solutions (climate change, anyone?);
· Destroying the national economy;
· Letting foreign murderers and rapists onto the streets;
· Selling our decision-making power as voters to unelected supra-national bodies like the World Health Organisation.
Ah, yes, public trust and responsibility, Troy.
The Australian said that Joyce is an idiot who drinks to much – neither of these assertions is established by the much-reported incident – but should not resign. Some Labor MP likened Joyce to Sir Les Patterson, described by the late Peter Cook as Barry Humphries’, and possibly anybody’s, best comedy creation. Speaking of the great Barry, I once referred to the activities of one of Barnaby’s Nat colleagues as “the adventures of Bridget McKenzie”, but that is another story. The Sydney Morning Herald asked, how do you solve a problem like Barnaby? His own estimable leader, David Littleproud, delicately suggested some leave.
The Labor MP and all other politicians should just be grateful that some a***hole with a camera didn’t film, then circulate, compromising footage of them. Just sayin’.
Whenever I think of Barnaby, I am reminded of John McEwen, a Country Party leader of renown in the 1960s and a Deputy Prime Minister to Menzies, Holt and others. (I should note that Bramston wrote a passable book on Menzies). It was unknown by most until 2014 that Black Jack John McEwen committed suicide:
SAD details have emerged of the death of Sir John “Black Jack’’ McEwen, a giant of 20th century Australian politics and the nation’s shortest-serving prime minister.
A new book reveals that Sir John, who served as Australia’s 18th Prime Minister for 23 days after the drowning of Harold Holt, took his own life in 1980.
Sir John served as Country Party Leader and Deputy Prime Minister from 1958 to 1971.
During research for a book on the history of political communications by Australian prime ministers, Canberra author Julian Fitzgerald uncovered evidence that Sir John chose to end his own life in 1980 by refusing food.
Sir John was 80 when he died on November 20, 1980 at his Melbourne home. He had long suffered from a severe form of dermatitis that affected his hands, chest and feet.
Far more significantly, McEwen in 1967 threatened to withdraw the Country Party from the Coalition Government if the Liberals elected Billy McMahon as leader following the drowning death of Harold Holt. Think of this as the McEwen Option. Well, Barnaby had this ace up his sleeve in 2015 when the dumbo Libs moved to dispense with the services of their only decent leader since Howard and installed the Malchurian Candidate himself. (Okay, Brendan Nelson was all right, too; another one never given a fair shot because of a leftie megalomaniac. Dutton is yet to earn his stripes).
In an act of singular moral cowardice, Barnaby and the Nats said nothing, witnessed the execution of Tony Abbott and delivered Turnbull and the (consequent) ultimate demise of the Liberal Party as a functioning ideological entity.
Barnaby Joyce was the only man in Australia who could stop Turnbull. He didn’t.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/03/barnabys-real-greater-infidelity/
It turns out that 2015 was a disastrous year for Joyce. That was the year he shepherded through Parliament a benign-sounding piece of legislation called the Biosecurity Act. If this doesn’t sound familiar, it should. It was this legislation that allowed the Commonwealth to deliver marshall Covid law, to utterly destroy our freedom, rights, economy, political culture and our liberal democracy, and to set up the ecosystem for future dystopian tyranny. Yep, that was Barnaby. Then, post-Covid, he refused to take even a shred of responsibility. No, he is far worse than an idiot.
When Christian Porter and Professor Greg Hunt saw the power that the Biosecurity Act gave the Health Minister during a plandemic, they simply couldn’t believe it. It was head-shakingly fascist.
If Barnaby Joyce should resign, then so should every other member of the Morrison Government, for something far, far worse than falling over pissed in the street.
Which brings us back to Troy Bramston. And what we might literally term “gutter journalism”, in this case.
If he hoped to start a wave of popular demand for Joyce’s resignation, well, you only had to read some of The Australian’s whip-smart commenters to realise that his efforts had fallen on deaf ears. All his feeble hit-piece achieved was to remind everyone what real political failures look like, and Exhibit A quickly emerged. It was Airbus Albo, who couldn’t lie in bed straight and who is rapidly beginning to make Gough Whitlam look like a sensible, focused, in-tune, moderate, mildly-reformist statesman.
But this says something terrible about the standard of journalism in this country, n’est-ce pas?
No doubt, Bramston is paid reasonable money for his regular columns. No, we cannot all be Henry Ergas, but really. Why do not these halfwits actually report real matters, and not ignore them? Why do they crucify politicians for the wrong reasons? Why didn’t anyone else see that Joyce has real things of which he should be ashamed? The things he has done and not done – I have named merely the two most disastrous – are enough to drive a man to, well, drink.
If the Bramston fail was the result of a predictable, partisan siding with the Labor Party, it would be unfortunate at best. Partisans will be partisans. But his error is far worse than this.
As for Bramston’s media bosses …
Many would answer instinctively, that the media prefer bread and circuses to truth-telling, and that this behaviour is simply part of the to-be-expected defence of the establishment class’s interests. During events like Covid, it all became very clear. It has continued on during the post-Covid “say nothing and hope no one notices” phase. Journalists have long since ceased to be courageous dissidents ruthlessly macheting their way to the truth about important issues. They prefer to ignore the core and flap around the peripheries.
Joyce is a classic politician who talks up a storm when in opposition, then goes MIA in government. As examples of the breed go, daylight is second to Barnaby Joyce. The one good thing he has done in his political life is to have ended the career of Tony “climate change snake” Windsor. Now that was some achievement.
Paul Collits
14 February 2024
Barnaby has always been a loose cannon. When careering around the deck he might demolish a worthy target or two but just as likely do a lot of damage.
But he is a minor problem compared to the Uniparty and the main stream media.
Just a mindless mob of useless mouths.
I would add ignoring the result of the racist referendum to the list. Politicians and journalists all seem to have stopped doing their jobs some time ago. The journalists are all losing money so that sorts that, but I have no idea how to get rid of the traitors.