Barnaby Joyce: If a dog makes noise during an interview and no one else hears it, did it make a sound? Was it even there? Image: Screenshot.
From Barnaby’s poor dog in Tamworth all the way to Albo in Adelaide, all eyes (and talk) this week have been on One Nation.
TV entertainment doesn’t get any more riveting than the trainwreck live-cross interview between Barnaby Joyce on his farm and the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson in the studio on 730 on Monday night (20 July).
To his credit and often not to his benefit, Barnaby always turns up for a media spot and the chance to be grilled by journalists.
It would perhaps have been a wiser move for him if he had instead chosen to be a no-show for this one.
The questions were so uncomfortable – about his allegiance to his party leader Pauline Hanson even in the face of her dodgy international associations and increasingly extreme far-right comments – that Stella the staffie-border collie cross became a welcome reprieve for the Nationals turncoat.
But was Stella even there?
No one watching could see or hear the dog, yet Barnaby, mid-answer, violently yelled at it to “sit down”.
Even Ferguson was unsure of Stella’s presence, telling Joyce to forget about the dog and answer the question when he used the dog as an excuse for delaying the second time.
Who was he actually aggressively telling to sit down? Was it Stella or was it his way of venting at Hanson? Or even a thinly veiled way of telling Ferguson to back off?
Chances are Stella was there and despite his red-faced outrage at the apparent constant barking, Barnaby was happy that it allowed him an opportunity to buy some time while he blustered through an interview he regretted agreeing to.
Just how comfortable Joyce is with the direction One Nation is taking has become a matter of huge speculation.
This week has also seen him distancing himself from the party’s nutjob Senator Malcolm Roberts, who believes the reels of video evidence of people dying around the world from COVID were all staged.
Hanson herself, back from a lavish holiday and rightwing interviews overseas, had to explain that taxpayers hadn’t paid a cent for her globetrotting (thanks, Gina).
And she made a contribution to the domestic violence debate like only Pauline Hanson could.
Which all brings us to Anthony Albanese and Labor’s (still going) national conference in Adelaide.
One Nation is no longer just a problem for the Coalition. It’s a problem for Labor too, and the Prime Minister knows it.
One Nation’s polling might be slipping from the heights it recently peaked at (thanks in no small measure to some of Hanson’s more revealing Press Club and international statements), hovering around 30, but it won’t go back to the lowly 6 per cent primary vote it secured at the last federal election.
Not in a hurry anyway.
Labor now very much regards its opposition to be the Liberals, the Nationals, and One Nation.
That the PM dedicated so much of his conference address on Thursday (23 July) to this theme speaks volumes.
“Beyond One Nation’s personality clashes, policy confusion, conspiracy theories and candidate chaos, and regardless of who leads the Liberals to the next election, in every way that matters, the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation are already a coalition,” he said.
“It’s not just that they need each other to form government. They agree with each other about what they want to do in government.
“They all want to cut wages. They all want to scrap Paid Parental Leave. They all want to make it easier to sack workers. They all want to make it harder for young Australians to buy a home.
“They all want to slash the jobs and industries powered by renewables, and spend billions on nuclear reactors instead. And they all want to cut Medicare.”
Indulgent propaganda talk that might be, but here’s the cracker that lets us know that Labor would prefer One Nation to just go away.
“And everything else, all those attention-seeking culture wars imported from overseas, all those trips around the world to talk Australia down cannot disguise the fact that none of them have anything new or positive to offer our country,” the PM said.
Other Labor ministers speaking at the conference and doing the media rounds have all been sure to offer similar commentary.
Meanwhile, the actual Opposition Leader, Angus Taylor, can’t seem to win a trick – or convince anyone that he doesn’t want to join ranks with Pauline.
He was just down the road from the Labor conference on Thursday offering up the cliched line that Labor should be talking to everyday Australians instead of to themselves – as if he doesn’t himself attend Liberal Party talkfests.
The political landscape is changing in Australia, and it’s rattling everyone’s cages.
Time to take a breath and “sit down” with a nice cold “Stella”.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
