1] As a former leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has, according to established practice, every right to speak on issues not accorded other backbenchers?

So why the surprise when, like Abbott, he thinks he has been treated badly, that he doesn’t speak out.

He is doing nothing more or nothing less than what Abbott did for three long years. The only difference is that he probably won’t shoot with the same accuracy as Abbott but will hit a few targets nonetheless.

In some areas, like Newstart, previously known as the dole, he might even hit some unexpected areas of the target.

Barnaby has chosen for his first incursion into leadership revenge a policy that should be close to the hearts of country people for it is there that we find huge areas of unemployment.

The Nationals win the country vote because there is no another choice. They are not well known for their work in the country. The NBN, for example.

Sure, people have fallen for the government’s lies (am I allowed to use that expression) about job creation. Primarily that it is they who have created so many jobs.

Other than public service jobs, they don’t create any. And on top of that the jobs that have been created are only keeping pace with immigration.

No extra jobs are being created at all. The leader of the National Party (I can never remember his name such is his charisma) brings all his powers of creative thinking together in suggesting they try another town. The last time I looked for every available job, 19 people wanted it.

With business groups, unions, John Howard, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe, ACOSS, the Opposition, the crossbenches and many other MPs in favor of a rise in the fortnightly Newstart, Barnaby has picked a policy that has public sympathy to kick off his 3-year cycle of revenge.

723,000 Australians – or thereabouts – are on the Newstart allowance. Singles have to survive on about $40 a day.

The payment has not increased in real terms for 25 years. These are not the dole bludgers the government would have you believe.

You could join them tomorrow.

In a TV doorstop Barnaby said:

“It’s just the very nature of being poor. It’s more expensive to live; things go wrong, they need to be fixed, cars breakdown because they’re old, the heater you buy is the inefficient one.”

In saying no to any increase the Prime Minister has invented a new phrase, as reported by Katharine Murphy in The Guardian:

“The Prime Minister declared the Coalition will not engage in “unfunded empathy”when it comes to raising the Newstart rate, and has ducked a direct question about whether he could live on the payment.

Amid calls from within his own ranks to boost the benefit, the prime minister was asked in question time on Monday whether he could live on the Newstart rate of $40 a day.

Morrison acknowledged the payment, worth $277.85 a week, was “modest” but said the focus should be getting unemployed people into jobs.

Morrison said unlike Labor, he would not engage in what he termed “unfunded empathy” about boosting the payment. “I will not go out as the Labor party did at the last election pretending they’re going to do something about Newstart but they won’t tell Australians how much they’re going to increase it by, how much is that going to cost and how are they going to pay for it”. “I won’t do that,” the prime minister said.

The Prime Minister is engaging in a load of bullshit here. Firstly, Labor said it would hold an enquiry with the view to increasing the payment. They were straightforward about it. Secondly, what does unfunded empathy mean?

I’m assuming that he is empathetic to the plight of the folk on Newstart but doesn’t have the funds to support a rise. If I am correct then Scott Morrison is unequivocally telling lies.

He has billions to hand out in tax cuts to those who don’t need it and has promised a surplus. He has buckets of it.

Scott Morrison will never be able to escape the fact that on the one hand he proclaims and preaches the grace and goodness of the teachings of Jesus but with the other he takes from those who can least afford it with all the unworthiness of a fraudulent leader.

The fraud is that the Prime Minister is so desperate to achieve a surplus that he is prepared to let people starve in order to get one.

Barnaby Joyce is an angry, self righteous, unintelligent man with no redeeming features. One who sees the past as a representation of his own present and future.

An intellect of Turnbull’s sagaciousness would have been glad to see him gone. The burden must have been heavy at times.

He doesn’t have the same cunning as Abbott but will still cause some grief along the journey.

2] Who would have thought that after three years of never achieving a leading position in any Newspoll that the first one after the election we would see the LNP 6 percentage points clear of the opposition?

How does that work? Well I have no idea, no explanation what so ever. Nor it seems does Newscorp. Let me repeat. Newspoll has the government 53-47 to Coalition and offers no explanation as to how it happened. Not even a hint as to if they may have changed their methodology or if they are using the same old landline methods. Do they intend doing anything different in the future.

The poll has the Coalition at 44% of the primary vote (41.4% at the election), Labor at 33% (33.3%) and the Greens at 11% (10.4%). One Nation is at 3%, which compares with the 3.1% they scored at the election when contesting 59 out of 151 seats.

Scott Morrison’s approval scored a new high of 51%, up five on the pre-election poll. Anthony Albanese’s Newspoll ratings is at 39% approval which is the “first net positive approval rating for an Opposition leader since 2015” but at the same time the worst Newspoll debut for an Opposition Leader since Andrew Peacock in 1989.

But really, as l have repeated so often, the only purpose a poll serves 3 years out from an election is to tell us how the parties are tracking at the time. It certainly doesn’t tell you who might win. Maybe Newscorp should consider quarterly polls and not create anti-Left stories around each one.