Coalition soapie
OUR two leading companions were matched by experts, but now they have reached a crisis point.
Betrayal and mind games are featuring heavily in the narrative of our favourite reality soap.
Next week promises to be “must see” viewing of ... Married at First Sight — The Coalition Edition.
Our protagonist is a Bushie named ‘Barnaby’. He portrays himself as a friendly bloke. A bit of a knockabout hayseed. A ‘straighttalking bloke in an Akubra with a beer in his hand down the pub ‘sort of fella. Easygoing, if not so easy on the eye.
But last week we learned the truth about Barnaby. His backstory is not so simple. In reality, Barnaby is not a private citizen — he is the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. He is pulling in over four hundred grand a year and living rent-free in a mate’s apartment with his girlfriend (a former staffer) and guess what? She’s having his baby. These revelations are jeopardising his Married at First Sight relationship of convenience with the other star of the show, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Barnaby and Mal are not your conventional couple. Like all Coalition Edition Leaders, they have been thrown together by circumstance. They work together but they have nothing in common. One likes boat shoes, the other likes beers. One is a former merchant banker, the other moved the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority into his own electorate at a cost of over $25 million to the Australian Taxpayers. They come from different worlds, and last week these worlds collided in public. Who will forget the image of a jilted Malcolm at the Commitment Ceremony announcing that he had rewritten his Ministerial Code of Conduct to state that Ministers will no longer be permitted to have sex with their staffers?
Barnaby retaliated by labelling the PM “unhelpful” and “inept”. Mal announced he was going to America and Barnaby was to spend a week alone in the hall of mirrors.
Then a twist. MAFS: Coalition Edition introduced an intruder ... ‘Dirty George’ thrust himself into the spotlight.
This guy is out there. A selfstyled National Party maverick from North Queensland.
Dirty George posted a picture of himself, holding a handgun and asking if “greenies” were “feeling lucky”. Yes, this bloke is a parliamentarian. But he doesn’t see anything wrong with this vigilante approach to social discourse.
This series is really plummeting toward the lowest common denominator.
Is it because Mal is behaving more like a jilted lover than a Prime Minister, maybe? He has lost control of the narrative and this series is erupting into a chaos of public spats and embarrassments.
Mal has never had the confidence of the majority in the Coalition. This ineptitude was identified by his own Deputy last week.
Rather than sort out the problem in private, Mal turned straight to the media to scold his partner. He did a lone presser and doubled down with a soul-searching spot on 60 Minutes. Mal may be Captain of the Coalition, but his lone-wolf leadership is not respected by the junior partners in the government of the day.
It’s hardly surprising. Mal is the man who bought the job. He donated over a million dollars of his own money to his own Party. His generosity contributed to Coalition success at the last election and this is why he’s still considered to be a central player in the drama. As any straight talking bloke in an Akubra will tell you: “You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Former villain of the piece Tony Abbott comes from a different lived experience.
Tones did his time as Opposition Leader. He spent his lonely days and nights grinding his knife. When he came to power, it was clear he was the boss.
His tenure was undone by his own hubris when Mal used that knife to stab him in the back, but Tones has maintained a solid support base. Abbott-onians still believe that he can come back to play an important role. They are convinced Mal doesn’t have the ticker. This is why they are running wild. They hold no fear and have no respect.
Mal is dropping in the ratings. He has now lost 27 Newspolls in a row.
The latest Newspoll also revealed that 65 per cent of Australians believe that Barnaby should resign. It sounds like it’s time for a major change in the Dramatis Personae.
If Mal and Barnaby are still together heading up the cast for the next Federal Election, the Coalition will seriously be asking themselves “Do you feel lucky, punk?” Ross Mueller is a freelance writer and playwright.