Barnaby battle far from over
WRITING about Canberra’s current political shenanigans is a little like reporting on a war front; the likelihood is anything written will be overtaken by events, possibly within moments.
Apologies in advance, then, if matters have escalated during the time between submission and publication.
It could be that Malcolm Turnbull has since called another ruinous press conference, after which National Party forces loyal to Barnaby Joyce surrounded the PM’s Point Piper property with tractors and combine harvesters, chanting “love is love” and demanding mistress protection laws.
Nobody can tell how all this will end, but it might help to review how the Joyce controversy evolved.
Rumours began to spread throughout New England and online late last year that the deputy prime minister was in an affair with a staffer and had been thrown out of the family home. Joyce admitted nothing when questioned by journalists and evidence of the affair was insufficient for any substantial reporting.
Solid evidence then emerged in the form of former Joyce staffer Vikki Campion walking around Canberra in an advanced state of up-duffedness, leading to the Daily Telegraph’s front-page revelations.
Joyce appeared on 7.30, calling for privacy. His privacy defence crumbled when it was revealed Campion, subsequent to her affair with Joyce, had been placed in newly created jobs with other National Party MPs. At this point, however, we were still looking at a relatively standard and survivable scandal.
Turnbull then announced a ban on sex between ministers and staffers. Exactly how this will be enforced absent security cameras, medical tests and the testimony of government-appointed chaperones remains unclear.
More damagingly still, Turnbull during the same press conference declared Joyce had made a “shocking error of judgment” creating a “world of woe” for all the women involved.
Joyce had, Turnbull said, “appalled all of us”.
It is important to remember here that city folk (and there are few Australians more citified than Turnbull), do not get Barnaby Joyce.
His popularity in the regions is as inexplicable to them as is Nick Xenophon’s appeal to anyone living outside South Australia. Or, indeed, to anyone living inside South Australia and measurably sentient.
The urban view of Joyce was last week summarised by Fairfax’s Jack Waterford: “Joyce richly deserves to be thrown out of public life as a terrible party leader, a terrible politician and a person who habitually demonstrates an incapacity for judgment about the public interest.”
To put it mildly, Joyce’s rural supporters do not agree.
Turnbull’s extravagant condemnation of Joyce gave licence for those supporters to rally behind the Nationals leader.
“He may be a fool but he’s our fool,” Randy Newman sang in 1974’s Rednecks, offering a southern US perspective on vilified Georgia governor Lester Maddox.
“If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong.”
That’s pretty close to the general sentiment among Joyce’s people, who know their man has erred but cannot accept Turnbull’s crushing verdict. There’s a reason why Labor is screaming so loudly for Turnbull to fire Joyce.
Joyce is a conservative asset, as was shown in the 2016 election, when the Libs lost 13 seats as the Nats marginally increased their vote and picked up an extra representative.
The precise tone and content of Turnbull’s Saturday meeting with Joyce, following the Nationals leader’s understandable description of the PM’s comments as “inept”, probably will not be known until the government is in opposition.
For now, it’s said the meeting was “productive”, which could be code for “no skeletal damage was sustained and the carpet proved impressively blood-absorbent”.
The best clue as to how this all might conclude was possibly provided by Labor’s Richard Marles.
“The idea that you’ve got Number One and Number Two fighting with each other so overtly is unprecedented,” Marles told Sky News, apparently forgetting the 2010 brawl between then PM Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard. That all ended productively, didn’t it?