WHEN all seemed lost – and perhaps it still is – the Morrison Government has found someone hated by the progressive elites that have come to dominate Australian mainstream politics.
Some years back, I argued that Barnaby Joyce’s greater sin was not deserting his then wife, but rather that he refused to use his Party’s power to keep Malcolm Turnbull away from the top job.
- Post Tony Abbott, there are very few right-of-centre politicians in Australia the Left fears.
- The return of Barnaby Joyce to a position of power has triggered those on the Left.
- He is a reminder of what it used to be like to have Right-wing leaders.
In a way that the Old Nats then led by John McEwen did in the 1960s, after Harold Holt vanished, when he refused to serve under a Liberal (Billy McMahon) that he despised.
Barnaby’s was an egregious error and a missed opportunity to rid the polity of someone that, sadly, John Howard (in retirement) had the chance to, but didn’t.
BROKEBACK
The Nationals have not suddenly snapped back to being Black Jack rather than Brokeback. Far from it.
The Nats’ recent refusal to welcome back an intellectual heavyweight of spine, traditional values and impact – John Anderson – preferring a former leader of the Young Liberals, they suggested that they remain an ideological mixed bag, at best.
As for the Liberals – fresh from their purge of Christian conservatives in South Australia and the shuffling off-stage of Nicolle Flint, Kevin Andrews, Craig Kelly, George Christensen and (possibly) Amanda Stoker – they must be shifting uneasily on their ministerial leather benches at the return of an unwanted interloper of Joyce’s type.
A maverick conservative with residual anger from his earlier banishment, the newly re-minted federal National Party leader has strong views on a range of issues that the Liberal wets had thought were safely parked, indefinitely.
The return of the moral outlaw to a position of power immediately triggered those who we would wish to trigger.
Whether it is the ageing, hippie cyclist in front of me at the Woolies checkout mumbling about coal or The Australian newspaper’s Troy Bramston, the opponents of conservatism in Australian politics are suddenly troubled again.
Post Tony Abbott, there are very few right-of-centre politicians in Australia other than Pauline that the ruling class feels challenged by, and feels the need to publicly hate and despise.
Barnaby is a reminder of what it used to be like to have Right-wing leaders that, to quote the fictional Francis Urquhart of British television fame, were disposed to “putting a bit of stick about”.
Certainly not ScoMo, or Gladys, or the virtual unknowns who govern the outer states of Tasmania and South Australia.
DIVINE
They have nailed their values, to the extent that one can divine them, to the globalist, progressive mast.
Under the cover of COVID “management”, these centre-Left Liberals have tacked to the elites.
There is an old rule. You know you are hurting the opponent when they attack with vitriol and invective.
Since Abbott was defenestrated by his own, the usual suspects on the other side have been mostly dormant.
They don’t even need to be engaged in the battle. This suggests that the Liberals have given up the fight. Or worse, that they have joined the enemy.
ScoMo’s ill-informed, indeed, ideologically clueless pronouncements on freedom of speech and the culture wars, for example, are sufficient to convince even the most casual observer that he doesn’t remotely know there’s an ideological fight in which he might choose to be engaged.
Or that if he does know there’s a fight, he either doesn’t care or isn’t up for it.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian isn’t even close. She is on the other side, striding ever onwards with her Leftist lieutenants towards the sunny uplands of woke nirvana.
Her liberalism is Left-liberalism, and always was.
It is due to the greatest threat to freedom in any of our lifetimes – that of the COVID Deep State – that the Liberals are gone for all money.
Like Victoria’s Daniel Andrews, they are crushing us with a thousand stomps and have become shills for the global ruling class.
OVERTHROW
What can one Nat achieve, even if he is Deputy Prime Minister? He isn’t going to overthrow ScoMo. What would be the point?
Unlike in 1974, when Billy Snedden was “leading” the Liberals around in ever diminishing circles, there was a Malcolm Fraser who, at least at the time, looked like a leader and a conservative to boot.
Of course, as it transpired, neither of these things was true.
There is no one else waiting in the Liberal wings to which Barnaby might turn, in the short term.
Then there is the opportunity for a ministerial refresh, to inject new talent.
Getting rid of the Invisible Man (aka Michael McCormack) was a step forward.
Not reinstating Matt Canavan – presumably at his own request, for whatever reason – is a shame.
The Adventures of Bridget McKenzie resume, but she of the grant rorts doesn’t inspire much joy.
The rorting of electoral goodies for the bush has been the only reason for the Nats to exist, of late, and that needs to change.
One hope she has learned her lesson.
Next there is the opportunity to say the right things.
The rhetorical flourish that gives opponents the irrits. As stated above, this is a strength and an opportunity for Barnaby.
But what about actually using his new-found status and position actually to shift policy?
The Nats’ main point of difference from the dripping wet Liberals is on the climate change scam, the false promises of much-subsidised renewable energy – whose advancement, let’s face it, is the primary reason for the climate scam, apart from ushering in world government – and the war on coal.
Angus Taylor could do badly with some help here.
SURVIVES
This is all to the good. But it is elsewhere that Joyce might better wield power.
Remember that the Morrison Government survives on a wafer-thin margin.
If, for example, Flint, Andrews and Christensen were sufficiently miffed by some policy action or other on the part of the Government – say, the total gutting of our rights and our freedoms because of a minor virus and the government’s bungled and fascist efforts to deal with it – they could threaten to bring the Government down.
If the combination of Morrison’s threatened vaccine passports and Berejiklian’s mandated QR code entry to just about any institution aren’t sufficient to exercise the consciences of Liberals already grumpy and existing the building, I don’t know what is.
The same goes for Grumpy Barnaby and his newly empowered Nats.
Time, as they say, to put a bit of stick about, Barnaby. Think of Black Jack. Just do it.PC
Hopefully Barnaby will build the Bradfield Scheme to partly drought proof S-E Australia, so that farmers instead of fighting over water can have what they need, as the obvious smart solution is to increase supply. The multiplier effect on agricultural exports and wealth, tax receipts and Australia’ GDP would be massive. We could then cut monies spent on rural depression, suicides and like prolonged drought assistance and side effects, plus this scheme would also generate a lot of hydro electricity.
We know how badly we’ve been governed for the last 50 years by the fact that it hasn’t been built. The cost is about $15 billion, being mostly funded by private/public partnerships. The NSW Government pulled down the Sydney Football Stadium, to be re-built at a cost of about $1 billion, when the same could have been satisfactorily remediated for less than $50 million, and it was only about 25 years old. What chance does the taxpayer have when these sorts of cretins run the show!
One of their prime party tricks to date has been to allow their bureaucrats to ride roughshod, some of whom in the Education Department seek to homosexualise and transexualise our youth, contemporaneous to employing their hapless lower intelligentsia woke following to implement these bizarre schemes. The current NSW Education Minister cannot perform her duties to prevent these outrages, as she is demonstrably dysfunctional.
Our educational standards have now apparently fallen to below those of some 3rd world countries, whilst our resultant spending has exponentially increased, and we stand by whilst these misfits trash our youth’s and country’s future, so we need many more Barnaby’s, Canavan’s and George Christensen’s, as they’re our only hope.
Barnaby is a pragmatist, not a philosopher, so don’t raise your hopes and expect an erudite demolition of the metaphysics of woke. That is the job John Anderson does with flawless skill, and it’s a tragedy that his return to parliamentary politics was thwarted. Anyone who was once a Young Liberal, let alone the leader of the Young Liberals, is by definition entirely unsuited to a political career in Australia. But back to Barnaby, as an accountant, he does the math on the basis of known knowns, and in this regard he is the political ally that Angus Taylor badly needs. With his farming background, Taylor naturally follows the same kind of cost-benefit analysis, laced with a deep understanding of the natural order, that we see from Barnaby. The other pragmatist of note we should applaud is Josh Frydenberg, although as a Victorian he naturally inclines somewhat to the Left.
We may never see Tony Abbott back in Australian politics. Incredibly, there are voices in the UK urging him to enter British politics for the Conservatives, as a potential leader of the right faction in that party, where Boris Johnson and his influential millennial bride are increasingly seen as irredeemably Leftist, green and globalist. If Tony Abbott’s British career evolved this way, it would be an astonishing coup for Australia.
Watch out Falinski, Sharma and the latest Leftist dope from South Australia, Simon Birmingham.
Between you and your other modern Liberals mates, you have crippled this nation’s potential on nothing more than an unproven theory.
You’ll be judged harshly for your undergraduate idiocy.