“It’s not about me. It’s about the Weatherboard Nine”, Barnaby riffs. He’s working up to standing down. It’s the best thing he’s done in politics but it’s not done well. Not about me…invokes the little people in whose name monstrosities are committed in populist identity politics. It’s a suitably tacky grand finale to Barnaby-Dada!, our current Canberra soap opera, whose title nods to surrealism while paying tribute to the blessed gift of paternity.
Some say Barnaby-Dada! sucks all oxygen out of our national conversation but it’s a rewarding show. We are miraculously distracted from the national agenda of how best to give the Coalition’s rich pals tax cuts at our expense, or how incredibly well-protected we are from ISIS Jihadists, who almost blew an Etihad jumbo right out of the sky but for our fabulous mincer bomb Mossad intelligence. And Dutto’s jihad on Melbourne’s African gangs.
Yet Barnaby-Dada! and its side-splitting sequel Mal bans bonking the boss offers more than entertaining diversion; a wretched Turnbull government, for example, may be put out of its misery by Barnaby’s big dummy-spit Friday.
It may be just the end of the beginning of Barnaby Busted our next enthralling episode featuring Barnaby in his role as The Red Octopus, as women call the man with the roving hands but the beginning of the end for Turnbull.
There’s a lot to be learned, for starters, about the man, his mob and our politics from the manner of his going.
Flash as a rat with a gold tooth, all togged up in a shiny new navy suit; trouser legs ruched up untidily over stockman’s boot-tops and a cattleman’s hat, always a size too big, Nationals’ love-rat, Barnaby, Thomas, Gerald Joyce, calls a 2:00 PM – put the trash out- presser. He’s stepping down as deputy and party leader.
But only to protect others. Barnaby has done nothing wrong: “Over the last half a month, there has been a litany, litany of allegations. I don’t believe any of them have been sustained. A litany of allegations,” he repeats in a mea non culpa rib-tickler that follows his earlier number I did not partner that woman ( it’s a bad joke, Joyce).
The latest allegation, is, in fact, a formal complaint of sexual harassment. Catherine Marriott whom The Australian describes as a respected leader in the agricultural sector and a former West Australian Rural Woman of the Year, says she wants Joyce held to account. So she tells his party’s federal executive. Joyce wants to call in the police.
“I requested that a formal and confidential investigation into this incident be undertaken by the National party to ensure there is accountability in relation to the incident I raise, and to prevent this type of inappropriate behaviour towards women in the future,” Marriott tells The Oz which reveals her identity, against her wishes, Saturday.
Marriott is determined that the Nationals follow her complaint through to its conclusion, her lawyer, Emma Salerno, says yesterday. Joyce, who insists he’s the victim in this whole marriage breakdown thing, asks his party
“… for the right of that person who’s made the allegation, and I’ve asked for my right to defence, that that be referred to police.” In the meantime he’s publicly called the allegations, “spurious and defamatory”, just in case his party or any other authority need a little gratuitous bush-lawyer advice to guide their independent adjudication.
ABC Insiders scribes nod wisely, Sunday. “She tried to do it the right way,” they agree. In 2018, the woman should not go to the police but keep her serious allegation of sexual harassment quiet; tip-toe to the offender’s party boss? What have we come to? Bridget McKenzie denies that the Nationals leaker Marriott’s name to The Australian. “Who else would have done it?”, panel members ask. They get that bit right. Barnaby plays victim.
It’s all a witch-hunt but he cannot stand by and let the innocent suffer. Sadly his PM cannot be present, either.
Safely in an open-for-business Washington, protected by a posse of fellow biz-millionaires whom he co-opts to hail Trump’s fake economic miracle. (It’s part of his wheeze to push his own plans to put $65 billion in their pockets on return), our Prime Minister of cunning stunts, looks on, from afar, as Barnaby falls like Brueghel’s Icarus.
A poker-faced PM imagines his deputy drowning; a red stain spreading in the lower right of the national canvas as he bides his time waiting for Trump’s nanosecond attention-span to register his unctuous fawning. Coalition policy is to normalise Trump while playing up our dangerous, grovelling, dependency on the US as 100 years of mateship.
“The economic stimulus that your reforms have delivered here in the United States is one of the most powerful arguments that we are deploying to persuade our legislature to support reducing business tax,” our PM tells Trump. “Because, as you are demonstrating and as we all know, when you cut company tax, most of the benefit goes to workers. It produces more investment. And, when you get more investment, you get more jobs.”
Turnbull tells an outright lie. There is no evidence of economic stimulus. Nor is it reasonable to expect any, experts reckon, until at least a year has passed. And not even then. Most of the benefit goes to shareholders who see the value of their shares increase as the extra cash is spent on more stock buybacks or dividends.
US companies have not only overwhelmingly used the tax cut to buy back shares, wage increases turn out to be mainly one-off bonuses rather than an actual pay rise. $5.6bn has gone towards employee bonuses awarded on the basis of years served with the company while $171bn has gone into share buybacks.
Turnbull, nevertheless, persists with the palpable lie that trickle down does not in fact trickle up. And stay there. A few embedded journalists who travel with Turnbull repeat his fiction so that by Sunday’s ABC Insiders, the lie that 70% of US corporate tax cuts go to workers is reified, and will go on to become a canon of mainstream media (MSM) belief as our media sets the “national conversation” about tax. It’s wilful, fraudulent, disinformation.
Trickle-down is a joke. Comedian Will Rogers, poked fun at President Herbert Hoover’s Depression-era recovery efforts, with the line that “money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes it would trickle down to the needy.”
It’s still a joke today. In 2015, the IMF published a scathing indictment of the ways trickle-down theory has been used to justify growing income inequality over the past several decades. As for growth, the authors of the report write, “Income distribution matters for growth. Specifically, if the income share of the top 20 percent increases, then GDP growth actually declined over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down.”
Trump looks at Turnbull. He’s demolished the triple cheeseburger. Our PM cutely seizes his moment.
“We have been inspired, I have to say, by your success in securing the passage of the tax reforms through the Congress,” Turnbull flushes and gushes over Trump’s A$1.9 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy.
Never mind that Treasury is reserved while the Reserve Bank thinks the “reforms” stink and economics boffins worry about where the money’s not coming from; how tax cuts funded entirely by debt may be a recipe for financial instability both in the US and at home. Trump just wants to hear praise for his guns in schools idea.
Fixing his trademark shit-eating grin in that awkward side-on-body-head-turned-to-the-camera handshake pose, a figure in an Egyptian frieze, Trumble offers best buddy Trump fearless advice on his latest show of stable genius: how to end school gun violence by arming teachers. Or does he? He could follow Sarah Chadwick’s example.
Sixteen year old Sarah, a survivor of the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, tweets to the Tweeter in Chief in language he understands , reports Richard Ackland
“I don’t want your condolences you fucking piece of shit, my friends and teachers were shot. Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this. But gun control will prevent it from happening again.”
So what is, ” I am a strong leader”, Malcolm Turnbull’s fearless advice to our great and powerful friend?
“We certainly don’t presume to provide policy or political advice on that matter here,” he says bravely.
Keen to win back The Donald’s goldfish attention-span and knowing how the odd trillion helps buy the right type of friendship, Turnbull flashes some cash to revive the President’s flagging concentration. Some of Australia’s $2.53 trillion superannuation pool, he says, could “help unlock funding” for Trump’s infrastructure thought bubble.
Money can’t buy me love? OK, Trump may be fiscally illiterate. Senile. But what could possibly go wrong? In an a meaningless gesture costing nothing, the US will jinx its latest warship by naming it Canberra, the snafu capital of Australia, a city which is, moreover, synonymous with all manner of ruinously expensive combat and overkill.
Back in New England, Joyce is not feeling the love from all of his party. Mallee MP, narrow Andrew Broad who nearly resigned on account of the notion of granting gay people their right to marry and Andrew Gee, MP for Calare NSW, another MP stuck in the 1950s, join WA Nats leader, Mia Davies in telling Joyce publicly to resign.
Seasoned thespian, Barnstorming Barnaby Joyce, The Nationals’ chief bull-moose lunatic, dons his fustian and heroically soldiers on, as he struts and frets his last half-hour as leader; upon an outdoor stage. It’s a hill somewhere, there are no programme notes, a Tamworth Mount of Olives perhaps. Great setting, Barney.
Of all roles, he chooses an old standard, St Barnaby of the double cross to embrace his own, noble martyrdom.
A martyr to the rural poor, St Barnaby’s “Weatherboard Nine” is his Ocker-Strine bush dialect for weatherboard and iron. His protestation of selflessness is also pure Tamworth ham. In the end – and right from the beginning of the end, his speech is all about himself, whatever he may claim. Yet it also embodies core Nationals’ chicanery.
Self-pitying, self-serving, self-parodying to the end, only Barnaby could call a presser to draw attention to his own humility; his self-effacing public life of self-sacrifice and big-noting. His swan song echoes the strangled syntax and populist pretensions of his mentor, corrupt hill-billy dictator, Queensland Nationals’ Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
“Can I say right from the start, this is never about me. It’s about the person in the weatherboard, something that manifestly expressed what the National party is about. It’s about the person in many places, their right to transcend through the economic and social stratification of life.” Now, parse that, you bastards he implies.
Incoherent, indulgent, unfathomable, Barnaby publicly salutes himself as the rural underdog’s top dog, the poor man’s champion. His hypocrisy rivals anything by Tony Abbott, also a Riverview old-boy with a privileged upbringing, although unlike Abbott’s parents, Joyce’s mother and father, he freely concedes are millionaires.
So, too are most of his pals. There’s mate Greg Maguire who lent his luxury apartment so Barnaby didn’t have to sleep on his sister’s couch. Greg also gave Barnaby and his partner Vikki a free holiday last month at his $4000 a week beachfront pad. Only last November, Gina Rinehart gave him a $40,000 cheque in public for his services to agriculture and in a heart-warming show of support she once bought a lazy $100,000 worth of raffle tickets.
John Anderson, a former Nationals’ leader also made a mozza. He got a plum job in mining company Eastern Star Gas in October 2007, just after leaving politics and according to Michael West, made $9 million when in 2011 the company was acquired by Santos.
Joyce still maintains he had no idea Eastern Star had a petroleum exploration licence over the Pilliga, including his properties at Gwabegar which he bought in 2006 and 2008. He’s been telling reporters that the land is up for sale for the last five years. Wags notice that the inland rail route now goes close to the property hugely boosting its value to any company such as Santos which may be interested in the gas beneath the land the mongrel land.
So it’s touching of Barnaby to remember his battlers, Friday. Looking out for the little bloke. He’s been recorded boasting in the bar of the Shepparton Hotel how he has helped billionaire cotton irrigators rort their Murray-Darling water allowances at the expense of poorer people relying on the water downstream – and of course, to do “the greenies down” because the last thing poor people deserve is a clean and healthy environment.
Barnaby’s also a Santos mining shill appearing on radio 2GB last September to spruik the advantages to farmer and environment of coal seam fracking, a service of great benefit to the billionaire multi-national corporation. True, his own government’s independent expert scientific committee recently finds significant “knowledge gaps” in the environmental impact study put forward by Santos. But it’s only fair that Barnaby gives the company a plug.
And one day soon, he really will sell that land he owns and there won’t be a whiff of conflict of interest.
On Friday, he’s selflessly standing aside for the battler. It’s only fair on those people on the weatherboard and iron, it’s only fair on that purpose of trying to make sure we continue that advancement of the person so that – if they are on the periphery of society, they can have the best opportunities – that there be some clear air.
Howard also invoked his mythic “battlers” as he gave away their birthright, including squandering a mining boom on tax handouts for rich businessmen while slashing worker’s pay and conditions with Work Choices, funding private schools at the expense of public and undermining Medicare by subsidising private health insurance.
Families suffered as child care rebates coincided with a shift to more expensive, privately owned for-profit child-care centres. In brief, Hosking argues, Howard created dependency, not just of the poor and disadvantaged who were scapegoated and stigmatised for much of his period of governance as they are today, but the heavily indebted, time poor, middle classes increasingly reliant on two incomes and welfare to stay solvent.
Barnaby’s back-block battlers have a right to get ahead, he says, despite his backing every Coalition initiative to suppress wage growth, cull full-time jobs, cut wages and conditions via a rigged Fair Work Commission, abolish Medicare by stealth and terrorise the poor with Centrelink’s robo-claw on the unemployed. It’s pure myth.
Myth creates a blissful clarity and natural justification without explanation or depth, wrote Roland Barthes.
Myth can be deadly. Even The Grattan Institute estimates that on current policies it will take 65 years before people in many parts of rural and remote Australia have the same access to GP services as city people.
Or is it the right to fight to get ahead? Must Joyce’s battlers pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?
Their right that even though they might not have had inherited wealth or might not have been born to the best family, or might not have had the best education, their right to advance, limited only by their innate abilities, to get as far as ahead in life as they possibly can by the sweat of their own brow.
Barnaby sounds as if he’s channelling John Howard’s aspirational voter. As Sean Hosking writes in New Matilda
Aspirationals were said to be upwardly mobile, independent, hard-working battlers bereft of the egalitarian character, welfare dependence and class based political identifications of the traditional Australian working class battler. As such they represented an attempt to shoehorn the values of the free market and political right onto the Australian working class.
It’s not the rip-snorting, water rorting or the pork barrel or even the mongrel land at Gwabegar he still swears he didn’t know had gas reserves, or his spruiking for Santos. Nor is it the $10 billion boondoggle of his Inland Rail Project, a white elephant even Treasury experts tell him will never turn a cent of profit. In the end Barnaby’s been stitched up by his party’s senior partners, The Liberals, leaking scandal after scandal to the Daily Telegraph.
Ironies abound but in the end True blue, bull-dust Barnaby, aka “The Red Octopus” may be finally felled by Catherine Marriott who lodges a “serious” sexual harassment complaint against him with National Party President Larry Anthony, scion of the powerful bush newspaper family and son on Nationals MP, Doug Anthony.
Larry Anthony who lobbied for the $1.2 billion Shenhua Watermark coal mine is still listed as a Director of the firm SAS Consulting Group, which counts the Chinese state-owned Shenhua group among its client list. Financial institution Indue Limited, which operates the Government’s cashless welfare card, is also a client.
How will the show end? It never ends. For Malcolm Turnbull, however, there is a chance to reset his special, secret relationship with the Nationals whereby he surrenders any right to independence and swears to follow a Tony Abbott hard right political agenda. So far all his public comments suggests he won’t rock the boat.
Turnbull’s government desperately needs the Nationals’ co-operation and that vital vote of Barnaby’s. But that can no longer be counted upon. Joyce did cross the floor thirty-eight times under Howard. Nor can Joyce be counted on to remain in politics. A lucrative job in mining may well be Barnaby’s new career. He can still wave cheerio to the battlers as he fracks their land and pollutes the local water supply to obtain gas to warm the atmosphere.
Sadly, for the PM and the leaking of Marriott’s name to The Australian may encourage other women to come forward, Tony Windsor, on social media lists several other cases of impropriety – all grist to the bush telegraph rumour mill. And also accessible to The Daily Telegraph, no doubt, should the masters of Joyce’s political universe decide it’s time The Nationals were taken down a peg. Already there are signs of movement at the gas station.
In the meantime, Turnbull has doubled his back-bench snipers adding a rancid Joyce to a rabid Abbott.
Ominously, Joyce has already promised “he won’t snipe”. As did Abbott. Their cat-calls and raspberries will make it even harder for Trumble to pay sufficient attention to his political masters, especially the holy trinity Shell, Origin Energy and Santos, an oligopoly that runs the National Party and much of the rest of the Coalition.
Even Nationals’ Andrew Broad, who chairs the House of Representatives moribund Environment and Energy Committee can see trouble looming. Turnbull may have sold the MSM his gas deal but Broad told the ABC last October that whilst it says it’s guaranteed supply, the Coalition’s done little or nothing about higher prices.
Finally, Turnbull has not exactly come out of the dust-up with his deputy as a stronger or more powerful leader.
if Turnbull does manage to get his $65bn corporate tax cuts through parliament – money that is being stolen from taxpayers to be given to some of the world’s largest corporations in a demonstrable hoax that the money will increase investment and worker’s wages, he does not have the credibility to sell his latest tactical diversion, a re-serving of the stale shit sandwich of the Coalition’s sycophantic relationship with its great and powerful friend, the USA especially when 80% of us regard Trump as either an important or critical threat to Australia.
After reading this excellent article anger and despair can be the only emotions that come to mind. It does make one wonder how much Conservatism has manifestly been the central and predominant factor in all the ills and woes that afflict the general populace of the world and the environment.
Carlton to Fitz commenting on the farcical belief that Joyce and his National cronies stand for the bush battlers.The Nationals stand for Big Gas, Big Coal, Big Water, Big cotton and Big Gina. Amen.
How much of the world’s riches is owned by the 1%?
I do believe it would be more accurate to ask how much the 10% richest own, but 1% is the popular tag for the global rorters.
Thank you David Tyler for this comprehensive article dealing with the B.J. business , etc.
The body language on display in the pic. at the heading tells me a thousand words … D.T. looking aloof (as usual) whilst looking past M.T., who is walking in tight step with him, and gesturing ‘ earnestly ‘ to imply a close relationship ! … sickening !
I’ll be back later David .. , I have to go and ‘ chuck ‘! .. ;-( …
Interesting and patently transparent. Take care, ozibody. I’d not intended the graphic to be an emetic.
“Flash as a rat with a gold tooth”… Sir, I dips me lid to ya!
Thanks for an exellent piece of writing David, and helping to shine a light on these scum bags.
While Joyce is in Auatralia fornicating,Turnbull is in America fawnicating.. it really is sickening!
Great article David. As a Queenslander I have always been amazed by the rise and rise of Barnaby. Here is an accountant from the small Queensland town of St George whose day job is to put in the tax returns for the local bakery, cafe and real estate agent. He then dons an oversized Akubra and suddenly becomes the incoherent spokesman for “the bush”. It is hard to believe people can be so bloody gullible. How many times have we heard the poor deprived Barnaby claim that he was “educated at Woolbrook Public School” (just over there), but not a word about his high school lack of education at the prestigious and very expensive Riverview College? As you point out David, Barnaby’s career has been characterized by hypocrisy, and deceit. Regrettably this minor Australian Party, the Nationals, propped up by people who vote Nats for no other reason than “my father and grandfather always voted for the Country Party” have their Coalition partners firmly by the balls as a result of the secret “Coalition Agreement”. Tomorrow morning 21 oafs from this minor political Party will decide (and be gifted) who the next Deputy Prime Minister of Australia will be whilst the Prime Minister, the Governor General and, most importantly, the people of Australia watch on, completely incapacitated, from the sideline. How is this democracy? It ranks right up there with the stupidity of the Pussy-Grabber-In Chief, Donald Trump’s ascension to President of the USA.
A wonderful read David, we are definitely witnessing the destruction of an evil bunch of Bastards. I dearly hope those so called polys watching from the side lines receive a wake-up call within their consciousness.
I do believe centralized government has failed dismally and has exceeded its use by date.
Will be interesting to see if Barnaby does a Tones and goes back on the sniping pledge.
I heard a senior National, either Chester or Gillespie, state that the Nationals are a proud independent party.
Independent? Then why are they so welded onto the Liberal Party in one form or another since the early 1920’s that a plasma cutting torch can’t separate them? An independence that sees them more often than not vote against their demographic and constituents in favour of the Liberals, and in return get a number of senior portfolios way above the number of votes they garner, plus a waste of billions over the years in pork barrelling that is thrown their way as expensive scraps to circumvent their “independence”.
This supposed harmonious wedding has many on one side, the Liberals, fuming that they miss out on senior portfolios, especially the Deputy PM gig, to candidates they know are unsuited to the above station role given to the Nationals. So much so that the Liberals often run candidates against the Nationals in what are supposedly rural constituencies. At a State level, in many States like Victoria, the Nationals are sidelined at every opportunity. Kennett so marginalised the Nationals, taking away huge slabs of infrastructure and money from rural areas to prop up Melbourne, that hardly anyone in Victoria could recognise or name the Deputy Premier for the three terms Kennett was in power. In the end Country Labour won enough votes to kick both the Liberals and Nationals out of power.
The Nationals are neither independent nor representative of their demographic. Joyce is the prime example of what the Nationals are really about, a parasite on the Liberal teat, sucking every milligram of blood they can get from the public bank.
David Tyler tells grim ‘ tales’ in a most entertaining way….
Comments by Aortic, Max Gross and John O’Callaghan put a smile on my face….
Excellent article David and great comment Frank.
johno,
even the barnacle would have to admit it was all his own doing, so to speak, but I guess it’s a simple step for him to convince himself the it was all a conspiracy.
Malcom’s quote. “A Governments prime responbilty is the safety of it’s people.” Then why do we grovel and bend to the Americans? Why do we get involved in conflicts that are no concern of ours? The US is in Syria on the false belief of fighting ISIS whom they created and arm. They are there illegally and now thanks to the Syrians and Russians they have been routed. We constantly stick our nose into affairs that can have no benefit to us. The Chinese and North Koreans position is defensive not offensive because of the actions of the warmongering Americans. The USA is bankrupt and is now nothing more than a criminal cabal run by psycopaths. As Malcom Fraser said,”It’s time we reviewed our association with the US”.
So if the Americans with their documented habit of creating False Flag attacks decides to attack North Korea and the Koreans sink one of their Ships/Subs does that mean we also are at war with North Korea? China? Do you realise that one Nuclear armed Submarine could destroy this country in one hour. Every major city?
You and your foolish cronies are playing a very dangerous game indeed. Do you really belive that the Americans will come to our aid? It will be far too late by then.
Now Turnbull has shown his true colours by announcing that we will become a major arms player. Sick bastard. His Banker mates will be overjoyed!
Washington has murdered entire countries in whole or part: Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, parts of Syria and Pakistan. Millions of Muslim peoples have been killed, maimed, orphaned, and dislocated. The dispossessed and dislocated are filling up the American Empire that destroyed their lives.
The American genocide of nations has had the full support of “Western civilization” and the Zionist owned print and TV media of Western journalism. Every transparent lie out of Washington’s mouth has been repeated by European, Canadian, and Australian heads of state and by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and all the rest of the presstitutes of the Western world, all based on created lies. All wars are Bankers Wars.
Both Liberal and Labour politicians read off the same scripts. Now Turnbull wants Australia to become a major arms exporter of death and destruction.
Australians like to believe that we are a friendly compassionate country but the truth is far different. Our politicians totally support this criminal cabal and have for decades. The stupidity is staggering!
If it is true that you intend to “loan” our superannuation to them, then it will be gone. Not yours to give. Their criminal privately owned/run Federal Reserve Bank can just print more money as it has always done. If America is that broke that it needs to borrow money from us, then it’s game over. How much is their defence budget? So Defence expense comes before the welfare of the American people?
Is Barnaby’s love life more important?
Canberra has become a farce.
It’s time this country had a whole new Political Party or such whose sole purpose is for the benefit of bread and butter Australians and to share its wealth.
It’s a long time since that has happened!
‘We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice – that is, until we have stopped saying, “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it”. Sydney J. Harris, 1962.
Wonderful article David, the grin description really hit the target
John O’Callaghan – I always considered Trembles was a fellator of The Donald and a swallowing sycophant to boot.
Glad to see Trembles is back with his trademark shit-eating grin, because there is nothing better than his lies with a smile to make him all the more loathsome.
David.
I have never read an article which so accurately skewers those 1% f#cktards currently in office both here and in the US.
Rest assured I am posting links to this article to all I know and to many I don’t and will continue until those with their heads up their cloacas come to their senses and act.
This is the sort of journalism which the Guardian now sadly does not produce.
Thank you, RatMatrix. Appreciate your kind comment. I am delighted to have your help in sharing my work as widely as possible; help speak truth to power, a goal shared, as you would be aware, with many other AIMN writers. The alternative is unconscionable tyranny.
Joyce has begged a favour from his mate Greg Maguire, a favour which has now been rescinded, apparently in the light of the former deputy PM running down the luxury apartment as a bachelor pad. Yet he’s hardly short of a dollar.
As of 1 January 2018 a federal MP’s base salary stands at $203,030 PA. In addition, Joyce as the Member for New England will receive an electoral allowance of around $40,000 per month, a subsidised car, travel; an accommodation allowance, free home phone plus a daily allowance when in Canberra of $90 per day. But before you pass around the hat, there’s more income from real estate.
He owns five rural investment land parcels in the Warrumbungle district totalling around 2,400ha and then there is the family trust.
Joyce also enjoys wealth stemming from the Joyce family trust, controlled by his parents, Beryl and James Joyce who own more than 33,700ha of land in Enngonia, north of Burke, which was bought between 2000-04 for $1.7m, along with a two-bedroom holiday house valued at $400,000 in Mission Beach, between Townsville and Cairns, according to http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Barnaby%20Joyce
Heartening to see also that Joyce is clearly back on the team. The PMO’s probe is called off. No further inquiry into breaches of the ministerial code of conduct given he’s no longer deputy PM says the PM who seems to have leaned on Martin Parkinson head of PM&C.
Wonderful also to see our ABC 24 opening its news this afternoon with a puff piece depicting an out of condition Joyce playing touch rugby. He’s back with the boys. Instant rehab. Just why the “Canberra touch rugby team” or any team should be so quick to let him play again given there may now be six women complaining about past incidents of sexual harassment, according to his lawyer, is a mystery known only too well to many other female victims of male sexual harassment.
The piece also gives Joyce a forum to claim that all complaints against him had been disproved – another mystery given that there is no sign of any formal response from the National Party. Nor is there any hint of what its sexual harassment complaint processes consist of. His comment clearly has the same status as his earlier claim he was taking legal action against Catherine Marriott, another finely considered piece of choice Barnaby BS.
From Marriott’s point of view, however, the leaking of her name and the closing of ranks around Barnaby Joyce do not augur well for her complaint nor for the rights of other women who have been publicly humiliated or named and shamed as a consequence of trying to seek justice in cases of serious sexual harassment. The ABC puff piece and the PM’s failure to enforce his own code are disgraceful.