If you throw mud it usually comes back to hit you in the face, Barnaby

During the 2016 election campaign the National Party ran a television advertisement of two women chatting and inferring that Tony Windsor was having, or had had, an affair. They were eventually forced to take it down but it greatly upset Tony Windsor and his family, and it was one of the reasons his wife did not want him to run in the by-election.

The National Party and Barnaby Joyce should have apologised, but they didn’t bother. What goes around comes around.

It is “alleged” that his then media adviser Ms Vikki Campion was responsible for this dreadful advertising campaign.

Tony Windsor in the past few day tweeted:

@Barnaby_Joyce Time to go , but before you do you might apologise to my wife and my now deceased Mother for your disgraceful behaviour and to the many others on your trail of misinformation and deceit . You deserve no sympathy, the sympathy should go to those you have damaged.

If it were not for his public persona people might be more inclined toward some sympathy. After all, to most of us he is just a country boofhead. But he is more than that. He is of the Trump mould. Do I really need to go there?

Having watched many of these or similar episodes during my lengthy time of politic watching I know that there is only one way the current Joyce drama will end. The curtain will come down with a dramatic ending. There will be no curtain calls. The season will be cut short. The main actor’s hypocrisy has been shown under full floodlights.

Presenting himself with Jesus-like morals to an audience willing to accept his preaching he now finds himself naked before the world. A sinner by his own actions. He wants to be forgiven, for it all to go away. The weakness of the flesh exposed.

But politics has no forgiveness. It just leaves a residue of wrong for reasoned people to soak up. The longer the play goes on the more exposed it is to bad reviews. Journalists had held back but now they see no reason to do so. The stage door is open to all.

Paddy Manning, writing in The Monthly tells us more about the ‘beleaguered’ Barnaby Joyce:

“I went over to the bar and he was very, very drunk and nearly falling over. I said ‘Barnaby, I think you should go home. You’re very drunk.’ He leant over and he pinched my bottom.”

“… another woman, a professional in her 50s who was on a since-disbanded federal government council, who met Joyce at a cocktail party at Parliament House in Canberra in 2010. According to Carabine, the woman says Joyce, then in Opposition, gave her his business card with his personal mobile number handwritten on it and, as she turned to leave, “grabbed her buttock and squeezed”. Carabine reported that the woman was so shocked that she said nothing, but when she got back to her hotel she called her husband.”

Now he is labelled a serial offender. He has allegedly been doing this for a long time! His sorry moment where he apologised to his wife and kids went down like an actor who couldn’t follow the script and decided to make it up. He failed the pub test, so to speak. There are so many incidents that don’t stack up. From water stealing, affairs, policy failures, gaffes, very wealthy mates, dubious expense claims and rent-free apartments. What next, you ask?

“No wonder Crikey’s Bernard Keane label him a serial dud who should never have been deputy PM.”

He is an angry, self-righteous, unintelligent man with no redeeming features. One who sees the past as a representation of the present and the future. An intellect of Turnbull’s sagaciousness would be glad to see him gone. The burden must be heavy at times.

Amid all the kerfuffle that associates itself with controversies such as this is the fact that Barnaby Joyce only represents 6% of the country, which is far less than the Greens but ends up with 10% of the Lower House seats. So the Greens get many more votes than the Nationals and have just one seat. A miscarriage of justice if ever you have seen one.

But the Liberal Party cannot govern without them. In the history of the nation they have never been able to garner enough votes to govern in their own right. Joyce has Turnbull by the balls and squeezes as required be it about energy, water, climate change, and whatever else takes his fancy at the time.

They have a soiled piece of paper that is like a heavy hand at the throat of the nation with wrists tied to the National’s aspirations, whatever they might be. With 5% of the vote they have an influence far beyond their portion of the vote. And we call it democracy! They even have a confidential agreement that it will remain so. Why? We live in a democracy, don’t we?

Labor has been campaigning for years to have this dirty soiled piece of crap revealed just like other countries – and the Gillard Government did – but they won’t have a bar of it. The only reason they won’t is that they must have something to hide from the Australian public.

At the time of writing I don’t know if Barnaby Joyce will retain his position as Deputy Prime Minister. (He may well be gone by the time I finish this piece).

1 That debating when he became the partner of Ms Campion is a load of crap.

2 In the weird opinion of Malcolm Turnbull:

“ … apparently a “mistress” is not a partner if the minister is still living with his wife. Ms Campion’s status evolved from girlfriend to mistress to partner and Mr Turnbull didn’t know anything about it. Really?”

3 That if he stays the Government will continue to be sucked into a moral pit of darkness of its own making. He will not speak with any authority again.

4 That if he goes they will pay a price at the polls because the residual effect of losing a Deputy PM will linger until the election in September.

5 That the whole affair is but a representation of the competence of this government and that it would be better if they all resigned.

6 That if he, next week, carries the title of Prime Minister of Australia well, I might have a citizenship problem.