Barnaby Joyce’s maiden speech to Senate yesterday is being
officially described as “wide ranging.” This seems to be a Press
Gallery euphemism for what Crikey readers know as “yampy as the day is
long.”*

The best summary comes from Mike Seccombe in TheSydney Morning Herald.
If you don’t like its title – “Roll up, roll up, and see Joh come back
to life as Joyce” – don’t bother to read on.

Secco’s comments, however are pretty spot on:

“What he aired in his
first speech were the old values of the Queensland National Party. Not
all of them bad, but all of them stock-standard factory issue out of
the same Queensland factory that produced Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The
hallmarks of parochialism, antipathy to city folk and southerners, and
special pleading were all there, in large dollops.

Joh, an inveterate supporter of businessmen wanting subsidies to help
develop products of dubious value, also came to mind in his office an
hour before the speech, when who should appear in his doorway but Dick
Honan – whose company, Manildra, is heavily dependent on government
handouts to subsidise its production of that fuel of dubious worth,
ethanol. An hour later and Joyce was on his feet committing himself to
support mandating the use of ethanol in petrol.”

Exactly. The rent seeking behaviour of Joyce and his fellow Nats is
effectively one rule for us, one rule for them behaviour. No wonder the
Opposition was still targeting the Minister for Local Government,
Territories and Roads, Jim Lloyd, over regional grants in Question Time
yesterday – as The Age reports here.
No wonder the Joh years are noted for their corruption.

The guy who actually delivered the Coalition their Senate majority,
Queensland Liberal Russell Trood, also
delivered his maiden yesterday. Pity it didn’t get as much attention as
Barnyard’s.

His message? Embrace Asia, globalisation and open markets. Nothing
about special funds for special interests – and the brown paper bags
they often end up coming in.

*CRIKEY: For those not in the know, “yampy as the day is long” is a favourite Crikey expression. Wikipedia traces the word Yampy back to Birmingham English, or Brummie (a dialectal hybrid
of northern, southern, Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and
Worcestershire speech). To be yampy is to be “scatty and lively, to the
point of madness.”