Saturday 29 July 2017

Barnaby Joyce, like the Prime Minister, went into hiding as the events of the ABC’s Four Corners water scandal finally surfaced mid-week to condemn those who might break the law.

At a press conference on Wednesday he dwelt with both the water issue and the citizenship of Matt Canavan.

He likened water thieves to cattle and sheep thieves, saying people who broke the law would be dealt with by the proper processes.

At that time he said he would wait for the findings of a NSW inquiry and then take the matter to the Council of Australian Governments.

That statement certainly lacked veracity. Is it any wonder that the Australian public don’t trust politicians when two-faced bastards like Joyce corrupt our democratic processes with such cavalier born to rule superiority?

Just who do they think they are, this mob of well-educated buffoons who think there are rules for everyone but them? What a disgrace this government is – so engrossed in its own petty self rightousness.

Philip Coorey reporting in The Australian Financial Review said:

After publicly likening the alleged theft to cattle or sheep rustling on Wednesday morning and saying the law should be enforced, Mr Joyce was recorded rubbishing the ABC Four Corners report on Thursday night while talking to irrigators in a Shepparton pub.

In doing so, he effectively confirmed he had made Malcolm Turnbull take water away from the environment portfolio and give it to him so he could protect upstream interests.

We have taken water, put it back into agriculture, so we could look after you and make sure we don’t have the greenies running the show basically sending you out the back door, and that was a hard ask,’‘ he said in the recording.

A couple of nights ago on Four Corners, you know what that’s all about? It’s about them trying to take more water off you, trying to create a calamity. A calamity for which the solution is to take more water off you, shut more of your towns down.

If Parliament were sitting he would be in some serious bother. As it is, because we have a Prime Minister lacking in intestinal fortitude and integrity, both Canavan and Joyce will probably get away with their deplorable behavior.

I cannot recall a moment in time where Australia has been so badly served by government. It’s as though we have caught the Trump virus.

Australian Conservation Foundation campaign director Paul Sinclair said the comments were borderline conspiratorial and showed the fox is in charge of the hen-house.

Compromises were made under the historic basin plan by all involved in order to end decades of squabbling and return water to the river to ensure the long-term viability of the wildlife, communities and farmers that rely on it.
How can the Australian public have confidence that the plan is being fully and fairly implemented when the minister in charge is making these kind of borderline conspiratorial claims.

Is it any wonder the Labor Party are taking the government to court to find out just what is in the signed agreement between Turnbull and the National Party. On the evidence thus far it would seem that we are being governed by a bunch of clowns, but just because clowns govern us, it doesn’t mean we have to laugh.

The same goes for Matt Canavan who is asking Australians to believe what is the most ludicrous reason for why he was unaware that he held duel citizen.

Not to mention One Nations prize twit Malcolm Roberts who just seems to interpret the rules to suit him. Everyone else is supposed to supply empirical evidence except him.

The Prime Minister, his Cabinet and all of those who serve them have turned the governance of our nation into a circus.

And they are talking about four-year terms. Given that we have to wait for an election to oust them the least they could do is to try and be honest with the electorate. Immediately.

More about Barnaby Joyce

The day has finally arrived. Barnaby Joyce has become Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. Now we have a Prime Minister who firmly believes in a Republic, equality in marriage and the science of Climate Change and a deputy who does not. The intellectual gap between them is of sagacious proportion.

It is said of Barnaby that he is the best retail salesman in Australia. I would suggest the public sees him as a person of mockery. It’s not so much his culitivated ocker image. After all Hawke and Keating had colorful turns of phrase. It’s the depth of comprehension. The understanding of things beyond politics.

It seems incredible that a man who was one of the principle instigators in 2009 of the downfall of the then opposition leader can now be his deputy.

It also seems implausible that a Senator who has crossed the floor to vote against his party on 19 occasions can now lead it.

Remember what Joyce said about mining Antarctica in 2006. He went there for a month and came back spruiking the beauty of it: ”The vastness of nature itself”.

We staked a claim to a large part of it and signed an agreement not to mine it. Then he suggested on the ABC that we should.

We can really realise that [mining’s] the game … or we can stick our head in the snow.

Do I turn my head and allow another country to exploit my resource … or do I position myself in such a way as I’m going to exploit it myself before they get there.

In the same year Barnaby opposed the new wonder drug Gardasil for the treatment of cervical cancer. The drug is now commonplace and is administered to boys and girls in their first year of high school.

Barnaby opposed it because of:

The psychological implications or the social implications … There might be an overwhelming (public) backlash from people saying ‘don’t you dare put something out there that gives my 12-year-old daughter a license to be promiscuous.

It gets worse. On Climate Change. When he was a Senator he said, despite all the science, that he had:

”Serious doubt about our ability to change the climate” and that ”the climate change debate is an ongoing debate”.

In 2010 he said he didn’t believe that global warming is as bad as everyone says.

”Why do I say that … not because I have the factual premise to debunk them on the science” Barnaby explained.

Then he said that Climate Change was:

”An indulgent and irrelevant debate because, even if climate changes turns out to exist one day, we will have absolutely no impact on it whatsoever”

It doesn’t finish there. When he was asked about being identified as a climate denier he answered:

”The whole terms repugnant. Climate change denier, like Holocaust denier…”

On the subject of abortion he tends to lecture women. Whatever your view on the subject in Australia the topic is generally treated with caution by politicians.

In 2004 speaking to Mark Colvin he said. He’s:

”Pro-life, unashamedly pro-life” and that his ”personal philosophy is anti-abortion”.

In 2005 he said that his greatest achievement would be to… ”Stop abortion’ it was. ‘The slavery debate of our time” he was ‘philosophically opposed’ to Medicare paying for abortions. He said that using the RU486 drug was like an act of murder. ‘So if I shoot a woman in the abdomen and do not kill her but kill the baby, I have not actually committed a crime’

Barnaby argued before the Community Affairs Legislation committee.

The absurdity of this statement was pointed out at the time by Women’s Electoral Lobby ACT convener Rosyln Dundas who commented ‘No, you actually have committed a crime by shooting a woman.’

He also gloated about rolling the then opposition leader.

Leadership demands more than just a ‘retail’ personality. It requires, in the sense of leading a country, a deep insightful worldview. Anyone who has seen Joyce on a Q&A panel with guests who present an understanding of life in all its variances will acknowledge that he has not the capacity to appreciate life beyond politics. He is like Abbott, caught in a world that the rest of us have left far behind.

And so we have as Deputy PM the man who said a roast would cost $100 under Labor’s Carbon tax and who, when Finance Minister said Australia would default on its debt. The then Reserve bank Governor at the time said he was unfit for the job. We deserve better.

My thought for the day

”Be generous with your praise and considerate with your criticism”.