Boozing is least of Barnaby’s sins

by PAUL COLLITS – THE Australian newspaper’s Labor Party plant, Troy Bramston, has launched a feral attack on Barnaby Joyce because he fell off a planter box after having a few too many

Bramston wrote that Joyce should do everyone a favour and quit parliament without delay. 

Barnaby Joyce is a classic politician who talks up a storm while in opposition, then goes missing in action when in government.

“How long must we endure this debasement of our politics by a man so utterly unworthy of public trust and responsibility?” he continued.

Well blow me down with a feather. Bramston urged a resignation from Parliament and spoke of standards.

HALFWITS

Meanwhile, we should be talking about the standards of all MPs, especially those with power – too much power – and halfwit journalists who don’t see the real issues from the rubbish.

Trust and responsibility? Where to start?  Well, we could try these.

  • 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 our 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.

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 someone with a camera hasn’t filmed, then circulated, compromising footage of them. Just saying.

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.

It was unknown by most until 2014 that Black Jack John McEwen committed suicide.

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.

TURNBULL

Well, Barnaby had this ace up his sleeve in 2015 when the foolish Libs moved to dispense with the services of their only decent leader since John Howard and install Malcolm Turnbull.

(Okay, Brendan Nelson was alright, 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.

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 law, to utterly destroy our freedom, rights, economy, political culture and our liberal democracy.

Yep, that was Barnaby. Then, post-COVID, he refused to take even a shred of responsibility. No, he is far worse than an idiot.

DRUNK

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 drunk 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, nést-ce pas?

No doubt, Bramston is paid reasonable money for his regular columns. No, we cannot all be Henry Ergas, but really.

Why don’t 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.

PARTISANS

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 clear. It has continued on during the post-pandemic “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.PC

Paul Collits

MAIN PHOTOGRAPH: Barnaby Joyce. (courtesy The Chaser, enhanced)

3 thoughts on “Boozing is least of Barnaby’s sins

  1. Jack the Insider in the Oz, told us Barnaby was ‘over refreshed’ after a long day.
    Show me one who hasn’t been there I will probably* show you a liar.

    *I know some just drink cool aid.

  2. Your statement that Black Jack John McKewen committed suicide is not supported by the article in the referenced link.

    John was obviously at the end of his life, and as stated in the article, refused food (which is also merely a subjective description). Not partaking medical care when it it is futile and burdensome and allowing nature to finish its course should not be confused with suicide (which is a deliberate act to end life).

    Further, in the article referenced, mention is made of a Greens euthanasia bill in the Parliament of the day. The referenced article appears to be a propaganda piece for the euthanasia Bill by projecting the impression that ‘its OK because everyone is doing it’.

  3. People are advised when on certain prescribed pharmaceutical drugs not to drink alcohol, but many people ignore that warning.

    Barnaby Joyce admitted he was warned but still drank alcohol, and note that we was walking home and not driving a vehicle. And his wife phoned him, and he sat down to rest on a planter box on a street footpath, and fell off onto the footpath, and was videoed by a stranger passing by and recorded as he was swearing after the fall. No doubt the stranger has never used bad language, probably never drinks, and has a long record of public service to his community? If not the stranger would not have dared to make mischief of an unfortunate human situation would he?

    As Mrs Joyce commented, why didn’t the stranger offer assistance?

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