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Turnbull’s Joyce will cost him dearly.

“There’s no-one more Australian than Barnaby Joyce”, blusters Malcolm Turnbull, his fair-weather defender in happier – well – slightly less miserable times last November when Joyce, another appalling ham, in RM Williams and stockman Akubra, playing an outback whip-cracking caricature from central casting turns out to be a Kiwi, too.

By week’s end it’s clear, as Oscar Wilde, on his death-bed, famously remarked of the wall-paper,

“One of us has to go.” Not that Mal hasn’t put on a good show of support. Or milked Barnaby’s ” landslide” by-election for all it is worth and more – despite Barnaby going MIA, turning campaigning into pub crawls, refusing to debate the other candidates and talking of death threats. Hacks still misread the victory as a Turnbull comeback.

Cue the night of the New England by-election, a couple of old con-artists in a show about snake-oil salesmanship.

“We’re getting the band back together,” crows a PM who presides over his dysfunctional moribund leadership. How he loves to talk up renewal, unity. MSM follow his lead. He looks the part – all kitted out in blue flannel shirt and moleskins, the compleat Collins Street farmer. He tilts his pristine Akubra back to form a buffalo-hide halo.

A deafening roar of beer-sodden catcalls, stamping and two-fingered whistling buoys his spirits at the Nats’ election piss-up in Tamworth that Saturday night last December. But Turnbull knows truth will out. The “open secret” of 50 year old Barnaby’s affair with a 33 year old married woman cannot kept out of the news forever.

Always solicitous of our well-being and a stalwart Coalition megaphone, The Daily Telegraph toils virtuously in the public interest, all week, photographing Barnaby’s new partner’s baby bump after previously deploring the intrusion of gossip into Barnaby’s personal life, his privacy and the New England by-election.

Now the two old stagers face their final curtain. Even Turnbull must know it’s over. He’s signed off twice on two plum jobs, for Joyce’s new partner, Vikki Campion, just to get her out of BJ’s office; keep her out of the public eye.
One is with Matt Canavan, the other as “second media adviser” to National Party Whip Damian Drum.

It’s hardly a subtle cover-up. Even Graham Richardson ponders in The Australian why the Nationals Whip needs one media advisor, let alone a second high-flyer. Puzzling Richo, also, is why Joyce should promote Drum to be his assistant minister.

A salary of $191,000 for Vikki is now in the news. So, too is The Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Devine writing about Barnaby telling his estranged wife, Natalie that Vikki is expecting a boy. “A dagger to Natalie’s heart.”

Even Murdoch’s purple press has turned. 26 dud Newspolls plus one Barnaby fiasco may be too much for Rupert Murdoch. The Coalition’s major backer may be turning sour over Turnbull’s bungling ineptitude.

Creating national heroes can be hazardous, Turnbull discovers to his cost but he can’t help himself. When the Greens question Jim Molan’s involvement in the dirty battle for Fallujah in Iraq in 2004, Senator St James Molan, our PM thunders, fought for Aussie values against the ISIS Infidel and thus must be above all earthly criticism.

In his own way, too, Turnbull’s Aussie icon Barnaby Joyce is a self-styled Cultural Warrior on his own crusade for moral decency. Why, he even fought against girls being inoculated with anti-HPV vaccine Gardasil lest it promote promiscuity. He opposed gay marriage claiming it went against traditional family values. Now look at him.

Some unkindly call Joyce a hypocrite. It’s not playing out well in Tamworth, says The Daily Telegraph. Others raise the way the affair has been kept out of the news where Julia Gillard or Cheryl Kernot were hounded. “What if this MP were a fifty-year-old woman having an affair with a man half her age?”, asks Clem Ford in Fairfax. The media would have leapt instantly to judgement. Now the Tele has broken ranks, expect a ton of moralising to follow.

Moral posturing may be a key part of Joyce’s rural populist politics – his idol is former Queensland premier, the bible-bashing, corrupt hillbilly dictator Joh Bjelke-Petersen – but it carries grave risks of self-betrayal. Joyce, for example, campaigned against same sex marriage for years. In 2011, he addressed a rally organised by the Australian Christian Lobby and The Australian Family Association, posing as a protective father of four girls.

“We know that the best protection for those girls is that they get themselves into a secure relationship with a loving husband and I want that to happen for them. I don’t want any legislator to take that right away from me.”

How Barnaby thought same-sex marriage could do this is unclear, but he is one of fourteen MPs who abstained from voting on the same-sex marriage bill, Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017. What is clear is that in presenting himself as a family values campaigner, he has set himself up for a big fall.

Or has he? On ABC Insiders, Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek notes that the PM’s office signs off on jobs. Labor will pursue the only legitimate line of inquiry: she calls on Joyce and Turnbull to be “fully transparent” about the expenditure of taxpayer funds, which she said was the “only area in which there is a genuine public interest”.

In the end, the jobs will undo Vikki and Barney; the thin red line of the Prime Minister’s Office debit accounts, as much as Tamworth’s wrath. Joyce’s soap opera, moreover, makes Turnbull’s leadership look inept, weak and ineffectual. But right on cue, look over there. Our great and powerful friend, the USA graces us with Harry Harris.

We’re just mad about Harry. Our nation is overjoyed to learn, at long last, we have a US Ambassador. “Great Wall of Sand”, Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr, a Sinophobe, who doesn’t trust our largest trading partner.

“In my opinion China is clearly militarizing the South China Sea,” Harris tells the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2016. “You’d have to believe in a flat earth to believe otherwise.”

Harry’s “shithole” posting tells us he is no favourite of Trump’s but it does send a warning to China. A former Gitmo head, Admiral Hal also brings a unique record of duty of care to inmates of the USA’s “extra-constitutional prison camp”, Guantánamo Naval Base whose role, he explained to ABC in 2007, is not to be confused with justice.

It’s not about ” guilt or innocence” he told the late Mark Colvin, it’s about “keeping enemy combatants off the battlefield”. Harry’s past may help him advise Border Force in its own illegal, indefinite detention practices.

Doubtless Harry would admire our Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (resolving the asylum legacy caseload) bill 2014, a Scott Morrison masterpiece which gives the immigration minister, now Peter Dutton, unprecedented, unchallengeable, and secret powers to control the lives of asylum seekers.

Tragically, Harris is linked to the possible homicides of three young men in his care, June 9 2006; Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, a Yemeni aged thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, a Saudi, aged thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two. None had been charged with any crime but all were found hanged in their cells.

The three men were found to have stuffed rags into their throats; put on masks, fashioned nooses out of cotton fabric they, alone, mysteriously had access to and reached an eight foot high ceiling to hang themselves.

Harris declares the deaths “suicides.” Channelling a Big Brother hate session, he then attacks the dead men.

“They are smart, they are creative, they are committed,” Harris says. “They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

Naval Criminal Investigative Service records suggest, instead, death from torture. New evidence, published in Harpers, includes an eyewitness account of al-Zahrani, on the night of his death, which indicates torture and suffocation during questioning at a secret black site facility at Guantánamo known as Camp No, or Penny Lane.

Our MSM say nothing about “Gitmo” but a fluffy ABC gushes over the posting of “the first security professional” hinting at some pastoral care role for the new US Ambassador to Australia. Certainly, Harris will be a perfect fit to be joined at the hip, as our PM sees our US alliance, with Canberra’s tough on border protection boffins.

The big lie is that the US Alliance is a mutual security pact. Despite our political leaders’ bipartisan spin, all ANZUS entails is a promise to consult. JFK refused our plea for help against a “communist crisis” in Indonesia in 1962.

Before Trump, Nixon put us on his “shit list”, because he didn’t like Whitlam’s robust nationalism and when Man of Steel, US brown-nose John Howard asked for help in East Timor in 1999, Clinton told him to bugger off.
Thank God we’ve got soldiers like Jim Molan to protect us and to hire out to the United States; win its illegal wars.

Liberal Senator “Jingo” Jim Molan, is sworn in Monday and wastes no time in urging even greater expenditure on the military. A thoroughly modern former major general, Jim’s memoirs modestly entitled Running the War In Iraq, reveal his glee in using drones to direct 200kg bombs that could “pick up a house and land it in the street”.

Jim’s no slouch on Facebook or war by social media. Yet while he posts racist videos on Facebook and retweets a racist, Islamophobic joke, he can’t be a racist, insists the PM, because he’s been a soldier and freedom-fighter.

Turnbull rounds on Bill Shorten’s suggestion that he discipline our Aussie war hero Jim as “deplorable” and “disgusting”. Yet what is more deplorable and disgusting is the extent to which Turnbull must overreach; grovel publicly to a new Abbott supporter. He falls back on the last refuge of scoundrels, patriotism.

Jim is a “Great Australian” brays the PM, who claims the former soldier (in 2004) ” … led thousands of troops in the battle for freedom against terrorism”. Others know it as the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq, under the twin fictions of regime change and ridding Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction, while wresting control of Iraq’s oil-fields and utterly destroying Iraq, fuelling anti-Western terrorist extremism into the bargain.

As the late Chalmers Johnson warns in Blowback, the appalling blundering by US strategists in Afghanistan and the Middle East is the prime motivator of terrorist organisations like Al Qaida and ISIS. Jim may think he won Fallujah but he lost the war. Yet the monstrous lie of Iraqi liberation is central to Turnbull’s government world-view.

Experts estimate around half a million Iraqis died in the Bush-Blair invasion; A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Survey published in the Lancet, and the Iraq Public Health Survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine, give figures of 655,000 and 400,000 excess deaths respectively.

In 2013, birth defects for the city of Fallujah surpass rates for Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear attacks at the end of World War II. Scientists suspect the white phosphorous and depleted uranium in US munitions.

The use of white phosphorous was illegal because it is arguably a chemical weapon, riot control agent, or incendiary weapon. Furthermore, the methods and means of its use in Fallujah violated the laws of war.
Greens MP Adam Bandt has, however, apologised to senator Jim Molan, for saying he could be a war criminal.

Inexplicably, the PM skips Jim’s winning “2009 Australian Thinker of the Year” an inestimable gift of appreciation which unlike our Border Force and the militarisation of compassion, another of Jim’s great Australian contributions “carries with it no responsibilities, commitments or obligations of any kind”.

The fuss over Jim helps distract from the revelation that the Coalition has been lying about Treasury advice. Our ABC reveals how Turnbull’s government lied in 2016 about Labor’s negative gearing plan. Our sensible centrist PM calls it “the most ill-conceived, potentially destructive policy ever proposed by any opposition”.

The ALP wanted to limit the tax deduction and halve the capital gains tax (CGT) discount, a modest proposal. Yet Coalition MPs went into howls of protest: Labor would take an “axe”, a “sledgehammer” or even “a chainsaw” to the housing market. Such wanton vandalism would bring Australia’s booming economy to a “shuddering halt”.

Of course, the Turnbull government lied. And it lied that its lie was based on “confidential Treasury advice”.
It was a scare tactic straight out of Gitmo or Abbott’s carbon tax hysteria playbook and almost as damaging.

It’s taken a mere, two-year legal battle to find out the lies. Treasury advised in 2016, that Labor’s plan “might exert some downward pressure; a (possible) relatively modest downward impact” on house prices. The lie was a key campaign issue in the 2016 election. Newspeak virtuoso, Scott Orwell Morrison, is not, however, a whit abashed.

ScoMo still lies about who benefits from negative gearing. Treasury advice is that negative gearing and the capital gains tax mostly benefit high-income households. Treasury calculates, 52.6% of the tax benefits from negative gearing are reaped by the top 20% of income earners, while 54.3% of the tax savings from the capital gains discount go to the top 10% of families ranked by income.
Despite this, an Orwellian Coalition and its housing lobby pals claim the opposite. “Teachers, nurses, and police officers” stand to benefit the most or it’s that sentimental family favourite “Mums and Dads trying to get ahead”.
The Grattan Institute finds 12% of teachers negative gear and 9% of nurses. Yet 29% of surgeons and anaesthetists benefit. Doctors also get a much higher average tax benefit. $3,000+ compared to nurses, who benefit by a mere $226 and teachers who benefit by $289. But ScoMo never listens. Nor does his government.

Treasury is wrong, ScoMo maintains. ScoMo knows because he was once “a research economist in the property sector”. From 1989-1995 he was, indeed, a manager for The Property Council of Australia, a housing industry lobby group, a role guaranteed to give him halcyon independence, objectivity and peerless, impartial advice.

Morrison’s chutzpah, his Trumpery, his flaky claim to credibility, allows him to dismiss Treasury experts; spurn Productivity Commission research that Labor’s proposal will have little, if any, effect on housing supply.

The Treasurer’s big lies, of course, include the fiction that his government are good economic managers and that we are in the middle of a jobs bonanza. Public opinion, he says, agrees – another lie.

It’s not that every opinion poll is rigged, although Clive Palmer candidly admitted paying for the results the Liberals wanted when he was state director. It’s not just that MSM is always ready to repeat the monstrous falsehood – some defending it on the grounds that it’s a widespread perception – or it’s what voters think. Voters think?

The reality, Alan Austin notes, ” … is that the economy collapsed inexcusably during the two years Joe Hockey was treasurer. But it has tanked even further, except for the very rich, since Scott Morrison replaced him. The Australia Institute research indicates Abbott and Turnbull are Australia’s worst post-war economic managers on record.

Less forgettable or, as Orwell has it, less worthy of erasure, is Scott Morrison’s preselection; how The Daily Telegraph got the MP pretending to be an effective Federal Treasurer launched into politics in 2007. The extraordinary circumstances of Morrison’s entry into the political arena are almost cause, in themselves, to be cautious of any of his subsequent claims. No other MP, surely, is less credible; has such a flaky threshold of power.

In 2007, Morrison loses 82 votes to 8 to Lebanese-Australian Michael Towke, a telecommunications engineer member of the Liberals’ right faction, in pre-selection for the safe Liberal NSW seat of Cook.

Enter The Daily Telegraph. In four articles, The Tele falsely accuses Towke of branch stacking & faking his resume. Towke is disendorsed. The Liberals hold a new ballot. Morrison wins; parachuted in over the politically dead body of his rival local members gossip. Towke sues The Tele for defamation; settles for an undisclosed sum.

Glad tidings round off the week in politics as US fiscal genius Donald Trump’s tax cuts help panic the stock market into wiping off $2.49 trillion in a 10 percent fall by Thursday from a record on Jan. 26. Global stock markets follow, losing $5.20 trillion.

Trump’s cuts are acclaimed by our economically illiterate government which seeks to emulate Trump’s economic wizardry and his war on truth. Morrison, recently returned from the US, claims to have witnessed for himself the miracle of massive company tax cuts creating jobs. But the only example he can give is Walmart.

Yet Walmart on 12 January said it would raise entry-level wages for U.S. hourly employees to $11 an hour in February as it benefits from last month’s major corporate tax cut and on the same day announced it would shut stores and lay off thousands of workers.

Of course, Morrison will dispute this. He will know better than the experts. Better than any authorities or any so-called facts. He always does, just like his Prime Minister. It’s the signature theme of the Turnbull government. The future looks impossibly rosy. Especially when you are making it up. But the key lies in erasing the past.

As Malcolm Turnbull himself quoted from George Orwell, this week “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth”. It was not yet our reality, he says, “but no longer entirely fantasy.”

He and his government are seeing to it personally.

26 comments

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  1. Glenn Barry

    David, I always enjoy your articles immensely, the ground you cover so adeptly and the surgical precision of your wit.

    I’m looking forward to both Turnbull and Morrison singing a harmonious duet of Somewhere over the Rainbow – we are well into the realm of complete fantasy with those two

  2. Miriam English

    Excellent article, David. The humor’s a little darker than usual, though considering the subject matter, entirely understandable.

    Jeez, I can hardly wait for this awful government to be thrown out. What a totally f*cked-up mess they are making!

  3. Vixstar

    The final curtain………the death march begins for the LNP……….tick tock tick tock……

    Thank you for the article it was a real eye opener.

  4. Izabela Pike

    You have me hooked. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

  5. Cool Pete

    As for the point about Vikki expecting a boy, could this be a case of Henry Tudor Syndrome?

  6. John Richardson

    If the scandal of the Deputy Prime Minister’s behaviour has demonstrated anything, it’s that self-interest will unite all politicians when it comes to defending their privileged position in our so-called democratic society.
    Echoing the views of those from all sides of politics, up & down the country, the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, Tanya Plibersek, today demonstrated just how far out of touch our political class is with the electorate when she claimed that “I don’t think he needs to account for his personal behaviour, his relationships, to the public”.
    Really Tanya?
    You really don’t think that the character & integrity of politicians should be the concern of the Australian people? You really don’t believe that the electorate should be concerned about the ethical & moral values of our political leaders?
    No wonder so many Australians have lost faith in our system of government.

  7. kerri

    Great article as usual David. Interesting to note that as Turnbull gets more desperate he gets more shrill.
    I expect, as he did with Rudd, his desperation will yet again compel him to make huger and more fantastic illogical statements until his own party, growing tired of his pomposity, knife him in favour of one of those PMs-in-waiting you mention. The next election could see ALP resurrect their, quite effective “Oh no! Not him!” campaign?
    To quote Ms Bassey

  8. Christopher

    Thanks David, brilliant. If only our Aussie media could publish some truth. You must be doing something right as I posted on Joyce’s fb page, told him he should resign and so on. Then I get a nobody defending him and calling AIMN a turgid, little lefty rag. Ha, ha, ha, how lame

    Barnyard’s keeping his head very low, but has to surface at some point. Can’t wait

  9. Terry2

    Point raised over the weekend in our household. We know that these media advisers are not commonwealth officers, we found that out when David DeGaris on Michaelia Cash’s staff indulged in coordinating the media to attend the AWU raid conducted by the AFP.

    As he was not a commonwealth officer or a public servant, he couldn’t be held to the same standards of behaviour as an officer of the crown.

    It was even suggested that media advisers are actually paid for by the political party concerned and not by the taxpayer. Personally I can’t see the Nationals paying somebody $190,000 to do an unnecessary, fill-in job. On the other hand I can see them being quite happy about paying these people out of the public purse.

    Any body know what the status of these people actually is and who pays them and to whom they are accountable ?

  10. Kaye Lee

    Terry,

    “The prime minister’s office has an administrative role in informing the Department of Finance of change”

    I assume that means she was paid from public money, as Tanya Plibersek stated.

  11. Kaye Lee

    Also interesting to see Barnaby’s expense claims for family travel – the latest claim is from July to September 2017 (though Barnaby seems to be a bit late putting in his claims as he included a couple of family trips from 2016 that he hadn’t claimed yet.)

    Apparently Mrs Joyce had a toe to toe with Campion in April 2017 calling her a “homewrecker”

    The baby is due in April (or possibly March). That means she fell pregnant in June or July 2017.

    Barnaby’s family travel expense claim shows the following flights:

    29 May
    14 June x2
    15 June x2
    16 June x2
    23 June
    5 July
    18 August
    20 August x3

    https://www.ipea.gov.au/pwe/full-report/Joyce/Barnaby/Parliamentarian/2017-07-01

    The Midwinter ball where Barnaby stole the show cracking a whip was on June 14. He learned of his dual citizenship on August 14.

  12. David Evans

    So Harry Harris comes Down Under, to finalise the trump, turnbull dutton refugees and “enemy combatants” deal on Guantanamo perhaps?

  13. Matters Not

    Terry2. Media advisers, Chief of Staffs, Policy advisers et al are paid from the public purse (including all expenses). However they are not subject to the same standards as public servants. As Terry Moran (former Head of the Prime Minister’s Department under Rudd and Gillard) constantly complains, they are not subject to the Parliament either. They cannot be called to give evidence in Senate Estimates, for example, nor other committees. They are responsible to the Minister and no-one else (not including criminal activity.)

    They are in a very powerful position – often claiming they are acting on behalf of the Minister but often not. Effectively they become a law unto themselves, in their dealings with public servants and members of parliament. Moran argues that this is unacceptable – and has written widely on the subject. (PS, sometimes he forgets he was once a ministerial staffer (sort of) and probably behaved in the same manner.)

    When sacked or terminated because their minister has been dropped or shifted, they are entitled to very generous termination payments, because their employment(s) can be very tenuous. Vikki is probably on maternity leave.

  14. helvityni

    Did anyone else watch Bob Hawke on ABC last night; the times are a ‘changing, or should I say how much they have changed ; people were interested in politics, politicians ( at least Whitlam, Hawke and Keating) were all intelligent, interesting people, they even had a sense of humour….

    Now we have Barnaby and the rest of his ilk…Cry…

  15. Kaye Lee

    Nationals senator John “Wacka” Williams warned that any revelations about misuse of the parliamentary travel allowance could spell trouble.

    When asked on ABC to guarantee that Joyce would be leading the party at the next election, Williams said: “Well, let’s see how all the travel things come out and so on. I just don’t know.”

    He said “hopefully” Mr Joyce had not misused public funds in that way and also expressed confidence that was the case.

    “That’s the situation and let’s see how it pans out,” he said.

  16. Matters Not

    Moran on ministerial advisors:

    One of the nation’s most senior former bureaucrats is calling for the removal of the “accountability black hole” created by ministerial advisers, to make them personally accountable for their actions and answerable to parliamentary committees.

    He goes on:

    Mr Moran says ministerial advisers could be made more accountable for defined roles and become more answerable, in the same way as public servants are, to investigatory and accountability bodies, including parliamentary committees.

    “If the prescribed roles and a code of conduct for ministerial staff were legislated, it would force ministers to employ people in their offices who were actually experienced in the business of government,” he says.

    “Without this change, advisers in some jurisdictions will continue to operate tactically in pursuit of short-term partisan interest and gain while on the public payroll.

    “Ultimately this will be at a cost to the long-term, enduring national interest.”

    Most ministerial advisors have party connections. That there is an accountability black hole can sometimes be useful from a Minister’s point of view. Just ask Cash.

    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/call-for-ministerial-advisers-to-be-personally-responsible-20130416-2hx41.html

    I heard Wacka on RN this morning speaking to Fran K. He was less than completely supportive. Then again he retires after this term. Got the RC into Banks, that he pursued for a long time. He’s a bit of a straight shooter is Wacka. Good to watch in Estimates

  17. johnF

    “..win its illegal wars.”

    The only wars the US has won were the invasions of Granada and Panama, but there is a long list of “interventions”.
    https://williamblum.org/intervention-map
    https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf

    America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776
    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-years-since-1776.html

    All they can do is sow chaos.

    We need to get behind Australians for War Powers Reform to ensure parliamentary oversight of our involvement in wars.

    Home

  18. jimhaz

    Someone has probably already mentioned this, but Canavan’s office is in Rockhampton and then Damian Drum’s office in Shepparton.

    So I want to know where Campion was actually located during this time. Just how many days did she attend work at either of these offices?

    Betcha it was practically none! Hopefully this is being FOI’ed.

    If she did attend the office how much travel was approved for her and the cost to taxpayers?

    “The development comes amid reports the expecting couple are living rent-free in a townhouse owned by a multi-millionaire businessman in Armidale”

    I also want to know who this person is and whether this rent-free business qualifies as some form of allowable donation.

  19. Terry2

    The Staement of Ministerial Standards by which the coalition are governed includes :

    Employment of family members
    2.23.
    Ministers’ close relatives and partners are not to be appointed to positions in their
    ministerial or electorate offices, and must not be employed in the offices of other
    members of the Executive Government without the Prime Minister’s express approval.
    A close relative or partner of a Minister is not to be appointed to any position in an
    agency in the Minister’s own portfolio if the appointment is subject to the agreement of
    the Minister or Cabinet.

    Now, why exactly is Turnbull saying that he had nothing to do with this ………………….expect some fireworks at Question Time as express approval means what it says.

  20. diannaart

    I am well over seeing Joyce’s puce features in soooo many articles about this vile man. Maybe an app like the one devised for Abbott, turning every Joyce photo into one of Golden Retriever puppies… many puppies are gorgeous but there is something about Golden retrievers… just dreamin’.

    Anyway, what does keep me reading are the insights provided by AIMN writers such as Dave and the burgeoning hope as more and more practical evidence is building to an inescapable conclusion by his own people, that Joyce must go. A deputy PM his is not (among many failings).

    @Kaye Lee – am loving your travel itinerary – dates and places, the type of mega-data that tells us a great deal.

    As for Morrison… words fail. Using Walmart as a guide for employment practices, FFS!

  21. Matters Not

    jimhaz, ministerial staffers rarely, if ever, visit electoral offices. Why would they? There’s any number of electorate staff to handle electorate matters. Ministerial staff have their own offices or desks within the Minister’s office in Canberra or perhaps other capital cities. Different worlds.

    As for the donated accommodation, his name has been revealed and listed on Joyce’s pecuniary register. All, technically in order.

  22. jimhaz

    [As for the donated accommodation, his name has been revealed and listed on Joyce’s pecuniary register.]

    Ta. I actually noticed later that it was covered by Kaye on another thread.

    On the other matter, I’d still love to know what work was actually performed by Campion and how much was “work from home”.

  23. Terry2

    Referring to Ministerial standards where it says :

    Ministers’ close relatives and partners are not to be appointed to positions in their
    ministerial or electorate offices, and must not be employed in the offices of other
    members of the Executive Government without the Prime Minister’s express approval
    .

    The PM’s office have helpfully clarified that there was no breach of the ministerial code of conduct because Campion was not Joyce’s partner.

    So, the Ministerial Standards will, for future purposes, be amended to clarify that the term partner does not refer to somebody the Minister may be sleeping with, having sexual intercourse with and who may be impregnated by the Minister

    Instead, the term partner will only refer to a person, also known as her indoors &/or the Missus, who is bringing up the Minister’s kids, who is constantly lied to and who is kept in the dark and fed bullshit about the Minister’s bit on the side.

    For the purpose of absolute clarity, the other person who is not the partner of the Minister will be known as the Minister’s root, the f*ckee &/or adviser and consultant on horizontal whoopee

    There, that’s cleared that up !

  24. Christopher

    From his speech this morning, Joyce said that Campion was not his partner while working for him.

    Ergo, she was his employee, on staff. So what part of abuse of power does this man not understand?

  25. Miriam English

    Van Badham made the perfect comment:

  26. diannaart

    Miriam, agree.

    I caught most of Q&A last night and agree with Van Badham:

    “(Joyce) is a staggering hypocrite”.

    He’s been know to stagger after more than a few women when his ‘spirits’ were high.

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