CRATE FUN AT JOYCE’S EXPENSE
Actress Amber Heard sends Barnaby box of kiwi fruit
HOLLYWOOD actor Amber Heard has joined the mockery of Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s citizenship woes, as the High Court moves to fast-track a solution to the Turnbull Government crisis. The Rum Diary star, who with her then-husband Johnny Depp was a target of Mr Joyce for bringing their two pet dogs to Australia illegally in 2015, seized her chance for payback yesterday.
It came as the Turnbull Government was again forced to defend retaining Mr Joyce in his senior role, following the revelation he is a Kiwi citizen by descent — his father was born there. “When Barnaby Joyce said ‘no one is above the law’, I didn’t realise he meant New Zealand law,” Heard tweeted.
“To comfort Mr Joyce in his hour need (sic), I have sent him a box of New Zealand’s finest kiwi fruit (assuming this passes his biosecurity laws).” Heard and Depp last year pleaded guilty in Southport Court to falsifying quarantine documents and had to pay a $1000 fine for bringing in Pistol and Boo while Depp filmed on the Gold Coast. Mr Joyce publicly hit out at them at the time in his role as Minister for Agriculture. The pair were forced to record an awkward apology video backing our biosecurity laws. It quickly became the subject of worldwide ridicule.
The High Court will hear Mr Joyce’s case, along with those of four other dual-citizen parliamentarians, on Thursday next week.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and senior government members went on the attack over Labor’s role in the saga yesterday, accusing it of conspiring with NZ’s Labour Party to undermine Mr Joyce.
A senior Labor staffer had spoken to Kiwi Labour MP Chris Hipkins to request that he investigate citizenship laws.
“It says a lot about the sneakiness, dishonesty and disloyalty of Bill Shorten that he would engage in conduct like that, but it is not surprising because Shorten has shown disloyalty all his life,” the PM told the Coalition party room.
“There is nobody he hasn’t betrayed, whether it be his political leaders in this parliament or the workers whose interests he was bound to protect when he was a trade union leader.”
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop also sunk the boot in, claiming Mr Shorten had “sought to use a foreign political party to raise serious allegations in a foreign parliament designed to undermine confidence in the Australian government”.
“This is highly unethical, at least. But, more importantly, puts at risk the relationship between the Australian government and the New Zealand government.” She said she would find it difficult to trust a future NZ Labour government.
That forced NZ’s Labour leader Jacinda Ardern to state she would not let “disappointing and false claims” harm the trans-Tasman relationship.