Barnaby looks deadly earnest
THE funk of decay has settled low and muggy over Canberra as the leader of the Nationals clings with stubborn nails to this mortal coil.
In an extraordinary press conference on the steps of Parliament House yesterday, a necrotic but defiant Barnaby Joyce shook off the week’s controversy and rancid shreds of subcutaneous tissue in a desperate scramble to escape the boneyard.
Black-veiled trumpeters blew a slow and sombre funeral march just beyond ear’s reach as Joyce confirmed that no, he would not step down, and yes, he would love to uncork the prime minister’s skullcap and really pick his brains.
The public coal-raking he received from Malcolm Turnbull a day earlier was “inept”, he said, before conjuring up the nauseating imagery one might expect from a dead man walking.
“I thought that was completely unnecessary and all that is going to do is basically pull the scab off to everybody to have a look at,” he lamented.
The English translation of rigor mortis is “stiffness of death”.
It sets in as the muscles tighten following the primary flaccidity that immediately occurs when one dies.
Rigor mortis is considered among forensic science-types to be the third stage of death, following pallor mortis or “paleness of death” and algor mortis or “coldness of death”.
After inelasticity has set in, a cadaver turns a reddish-purplish hue as its once-fluent blood settles, before putrefaction, decomposition, skeletonisation and fossilisation set in.
Canberra’s country Casanova, his party and their currently-unholy union with the Liberals are all showing signs of putridity.
The Coalition as we know it today was born from two parties whose leaders despised each other.
Country Party leader Earl Page, an articulate politician described as “a man of boundless energy, fertile in ideas”, forced the Nationalist Party to sack prime minister Billy Hughes as a condition of consecrating a political marriage in 1922.
Page tried the same tactic again when Robert Menzies was leader of the United Australia Party – a revamped version of the Nationalists, and the precursor to today’s Liberals – but overplayed his hand and was thrown to the dogs by his own party.
The Country Party’s heir, the National Party, is a victim of Australia’s changing demography as population growth in cities far surpasses that of the bush.
The size of the House of Representatives grew in 1980 from 125 to 148, and again to 150 in 2001, but the Nationals’ presence has remained fairly static.
It peaked with 23 seats in 1975, bottomed out at 10 under Rudd’s barnstorming victory for Labor in 2007, and now sits at 16.
The Liberals now command 60 seats after last year’s double-dissolution election and they need every last one of the Nationals’ spots to hold a majority.
Joyce knew the numbers after he was forced to resign for being a Kiwi in October and reminded the Libs who buttered their bread.
“My name is Barnaby Joyce. The only reason you are in government is because the National Party held all their seats and won one (more).
“Otherwise, you would not have to have this discussion because you would be in what you call the opposition,” he told The Australian.
Now Barnaby Joyce is back after romping home in the New England by-election and, despite the sour rot on his breath, has no plans of leaving. This is not the end. Joyce will not simply return from his PM-enforced leave of absence to settle quietly back into politics like the twice-born Dionysus.
He may come back for a shortlived stint as a political zombie, but soon enough either he or the Nationals’ coalition with the Liberals will have to be buried.
It is a tricky point for the Nats – they have nobody charismatic enough to do what Barnaby does, but they cannot break with the Liberals or fall into absolute pointlessness.
Even in 1996, when John Howard led the Liberals to such a decisive victory they could have formed government without the Nationals’ votes, the Coalition held firm.
Time will tell whether the government can mask its seeping stink and avoid another double-dissolution, let alone win the next election.
Yesterday’s defiance sounded like tomorrow’s death rattle for Joyce.