The return of Barnaby Joyce to the front line is a measure of the distinctiveness of Australian politics. Not in his ability to come back from scandal. Boris Johnston and Donald Trump are proof you can get away with anything and prosper.
No, it’s in the nickname. Whatever their excesses I can’t see the British or American polities calmly accepting the return of a man known as “the Beetrooter” — or given Joyce’s run-in with the COVID cops, the “unmasked Beetrooter”.
It’s another example of the paradox of Australian iconoclasm. Oh, look at us, we go, no hoity-toity airs and graces we. No, we’ll call ’em how they are… as we re-elect them time after time. What does it mean when a root vegetable rises again? That’s kinda what they’re meant to do, right? I see in my mind’s eye a whole tableau of the rolling away of the rock, done with primary produce, the Beetrooter risen again, Mary and co. as zucchini, Pilate as a prize-winning pumpkin etc, etc.
But of course the greatest obstacle to the success of anything involving Barnaby is that it involves Barnaby. The haha honourable member gains populist support because he says what he thinks and what he thinks is like an Hieronymous Bosch picture. He’s a rural Catholic from an area in central south Queensland which for decades was a centre of the League of Rights, secessionism, rural anti-Semitism, the works. That’s how, when he was haha shadow finance minister, he came out with all that stuff about the US defaulting, the sins of debt etc. Because that’s what you want in a finance minister — someone who talks about usury.
So there’s nothing remarkable about him talking of “burning flesh”, with regard to the COVID impact on Melbourne, because in his mind we are the damned of hell. (Barnaby once found Canberra to be too much of a megalopolis; when first elected, he mused aloud as to whether senators could vote online, from home, so they could be with their families. Funny old world.)
Was this deranged comment — I presume it refers to the cremation of those who died during the 2020 outbreak — a planned outrage, a flare shot into the sky such as could be seen in rural Queensland, to leave no doubt that Barnaby was back? Or was it case of Barnaby believing his own publicity and playing to his image?
Barnaby is always out there because — at least on the evidence of his books, interviews, comments etc — he’s a needy, wheedling, whining mess; a spluttering burko always on the boil, red as the heating ring beneath it. And, Barnaby, ring, joke requires some assembly. Listen to his taped comments to a pub full of farmers in the Riverina about gaming the Murray-Darling system in their interest. It’s sycophantic, the nerdy, neckless country accountant the shade of a safety lamp trying to impress these sons of the soil.
But the Coalition believes they can probably get away with this, because Labor is unwilling to really slam home the obvious point: that Joyce’s sick remark, with some vague fascistic evocation — strength through Joyce — is just hate, actual hate, directed at an entire section of the Australian population.
What would it be for Labor to say to the suburbs, not, as spokesperson Andrew Giles said, it was “disgusting” and unbecoming of the office of blah-blah, but, look, they hate you! They hold you in contempt! And they want us to subsidise them! This is the Coalition for you! That would set off a bit of panic in marginal Liberal seats…
This is the fundamental asymmetry of our politics today. The Coalition has more chance of getting away with a contradictory populism, playing to anti-system and anti-elite sentiments from within power, because Labor cannot fully play to its strength, which would be as the party of rational modernity — of making a future Australia — against the ragtag of obsessions, bids, spin and pandering that now constitute the Coalition program.
In this alternative scenario, Labor would make the case that the Coalition aren’t fit for purpose, and do so by joining up the bits and showing that each is an expression of all.
That is, that the failed vaccine rollout is like the gas-fired power station mess, is like the Australians stranded overseas mess, is like the Biloela family mess, is like the car park rorts, is like ARENA money for fossil fuels. It’s that this government is criminally, stupid, incompetent, lazy and dishonest, and shouldn’t be anywhere near power. Labor is doing that to a degree, in a piecemeal way. What’s stopping them from really hammering it home?
The city-country split is. Labor is still hanging back from a full-frontal assault from some of the hopes and dreams that part of rural Australia is clinging to, and that the Coalition is willing to play up shamelessly. By doing so, they are limiting their capacity to attack, in the cities, the weakness and dereliction of the Liberal Party in their fostering of the worst of the National Party. If they were willing to do this, it’s arguable, they could easily roll over enough suburban seats to win government.
This they will not do. Yet the electoral maths suggests it. The ten most marginal Coalition seats are mostly suburban-urban — as are three or four ultra-marginals Labor has to defend against the Coalition, so that it doesn’t make gains, but get fought to a loss. Freed of the need to tiptoe softly-softly around rural and regional hurt feelings, Labor could let rip in Chisholm, in Boothby, in Swan — and it needs to do be able to do so to hold seats like Macquarie and Lilley.
But in really doing so effectively, it’s going to have to target the geographical specificity of pork-barreling and inefficiency, and make it somewhat about the city-country divide. It has to make the true enemy not Barnaby, but Matt Canavan, and the true scandal that he wants special treatment for his own, while people in the city are doing it just as tough, if not harder.
Labor also has to face the hard truth that their path to government in a narrow election, means having the Coalition pulled below both majority and plurality by the election of Greens and independents, in places like Higgins and Wentworth, and that it needs to assist them in doing so with a full-frontal assault on the Coalition.
They may not like it, and the party’s right would rather lose an election than do it, but, well, take a look at the pendulum. Barring a surging victory, they ain’t going to do it any other way. And surging victories, much less landslides, ain’t coming anytime soon. How long does the Labor Right think it can stand being out of power, before the whole show starts to come apart?
How do they get away with resurrecting the Beetrooter, when he is willing to tell a whole city of his fellow citizens that he’ll hold a barbie while they burn? Because all these things are atomised and isolated, and so objecting to them sounds like lamely petitioning the power that is. Making the case for an alternative means identifying them as manifestations of a common condition, and then making the case against it.
Labor not only has to convince people not to vote Liberal; it has to persuade enough of them that voting Liberal is now unthinkable. Identify them as vegetables, then crucify them. For lo, the Beetrooter is risen.
Labor’s main problem isn’t being able to talk people out of voting Coalition, it’s their inability to give people a reason to vote for Labor. By trying to talk softly and ambiguously to avoid spooking the rural voters – most of whom are trying to decide between their Coalition candidate, One Nation, and Shooters, and have no intention of ever voting Labor – they fail to generate any support and wonder each election why it was that their primary vote declined… again.
Agree. Even Nikki Savva when she was still at The Australian asked why Albanese wasn’t doing a Tony Abbott and holding outraged dooratops about Givernment oolicy fail urea. Goodness knows, there is plenty to get outraged about. Yet he is timid and unadventurous.
‘Government policy failure’. My phone suddenly went mad.
and ‘doorstops’
I think “Givernment oolicy fail urea” says it all, JMNO.
They do resemble the Oods from Dr Who, sharing a single brain… on occasion – if needed, which is rarely.
As Martha ‘Freema Agyeman’ Jones said, “very odd Oods!”
I mistakenly hit the globe that appears at the bottom of the screen and for some reason it switched the language to Indonesian and it then kept trying to correct my Indonesian.
Gotta lurve how tek makes our lives better.
Abbot would have had the entire ‘enraged’ shadow front bench all over the news by now, and kept it up all the way to the next election. Even with all the LNP corruption in the last few years, we hardly ever see the opposition out there. Remarkable!
Do you really think Murdochs rags are going to plaster anti coalition rants from Albansese all over its front pages- I think not.
There are plenty of ways to get a message across, especially these days.
At last a comment that makes sense. Murdoch is the problem. Labor cannot get to the ears of the public without a platform. As for Chris Bowen, he was well aware that whatever he answered Murdoch and Sky would twist it and attack. Sometimes you just can’t win. Throw in the lazy Press Gallery and Labor has an uphill battle. Best that Labor can do is get out and door knock and hold town hall meetings. The personal approach and the best candidates are our only hope.
Not much point knocking on doors to promote a “team” unknown to the person on the other side of the doorstep.
It would be preferable Team “Labor” were unknown – to know them is to despair.
The answer is in your last 2 sentences. As well as social media, get out on the hustings, ‘old’ style! And for gods sake keep factories, building sites and high schools at a minimum. Universities, town halls, parks, beaches, booths at markets and the football/tennis/basketball/whatever – go where people gather, get your faces known to locals. You know, like the old days…
Murdoch is a problem – but it’s not the only problem. We must not sit on our hands – or throw our hands up in the air because of Murdoch. There are Murdochs and Zuckerburgs and Dorseys and Paiges and there always will be.
Nailed it, Bolivar. And to JMNO, perhaps Nikki Savva could do the odd Crikey article. It’s working for Tory Shepherd.
3% swing 1st preference to ALP in Gippsland, 2019, against the tide, btw
Having lived In Gippsland I doubt Labor can ever win that seat. 3% is nowhere near enough.
Hence my comment yesterday, suggesting a Labor slogan “A vote for the Liberals is a vote for Barnaby Joyce”. I reckon Labor should go full speed aggression across the range of crimes. Sure give the vaccine and quarantine failures a run but get stuck in on the corruption and incompetence as well, and use strident language like “blatant liars”, “criminal-level corruption”, “mafia-like cronyism” – not at a personal level but at the governmental level. I don’t think a govt can sue you for defamation and anyway if it could you could just go the “truth defence”. Run through the whole range of debacles – the Murray Darling Water Basin, renewable energy, Robodebt, JobKeeper rorting by the corporations, the bushfire response, it’s a smorgasbord.
Bring up Morrison’s sackings at Tourism NZ and Tourism Aust. Point out that he got the sack for maladministration and financial mismanagement. Make the connection with all the rorts the Audit Office has revealed. He’s a huge target, you just couldn’t miss.
Abbott didn’t win by being Mr Nice Guy or bothering with stuff like the truth. Whitlam didn’t win by being polite about Billy McMahon. It’s time for Albanese to follow the advice of Ken Henry to Swan and Rudd in response to the GFC – “Go hard and go early”.
Morrison is particularly vulnerable now – unless Labor has some bombshell up its sleeve for the election campaign, it should get started on raising questions about his character now and keep raising them. Start wrong-footing him and keep chipping away.
Yes, Joyce should be Labor’s own (not so secret) weapon.
Sadly the crime and corruption of the NSW right is still remembered – and if it isn’t Murdoch will put it on high rotation.
Not to mention, Bernard Keane, constantly, even when not the ostensible topic of any given piece.
He’s been writing job applications to NewsCorpse for over a decade now, without a nibble.
Thanks for at least talking about Joyce’s ‘burning flesh’ comment about Melbourne, where I choose to live. It is as insulting as Morrison’s reference to inner city cafés, wine bars and dinner parties, and McCormack’s reference to espresso machines (although he didn’t call them that) being paid for by the honest hard work of coal miners.
However, what most surprises me is that I have seen no commentator (not even Mr Grundle here) conjecture on the likely response from the government and mainstream media if Anthony Albanese had referred to rural hayseeds, or Adam Bandt had disparaged rural life because travelling long distances puts more carbon dioxide into the air. No one that I’ve seen or heard has called out the elitism inherent in the comments made by Joyce, Morrison and McCormack – ‘country folk are better and more worthy than those who live in cities and don’t get their hands dirty’ (my paraphrasing). And these are same ones who sneer at ‘inner city elites’!
Good point, but it replicates the US GOP southern style strategy which is about dog whistling ‘urban elites’ etc., ably supported by Fox News…… to garner rural or mid western votes of ageing white Christian nationalists.
“They may not like it, and the party’s right would rather lose an election than do it,”
As per the UK, where Corbyn was consistently undermined by people in the UK Labour Party who would rather see Boris Johnson in power than Corbyn…
The maths are excruciating, aren’t they? Seeing Chris Bowen twisting and turning, trying to present the smallest possible target, on Insiders on Sunday was also excruciating.
Very very glad I didn’t have kids. It’s going to get very ugly indeed, quite soon… (seen the US/Canada heatwaves? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet).
Asked directly whether “Labor” would approve the new coal mine near Mudgee he tap danced away as if on speed and about as coherent.
Well put. It’s all about not giving the LNP/Murdoch attack dogs even a sentence fragment they can quote mine. You can see they are all still suffering PTSD from the Abbott attack in 2009-2012. That was one of the most spectacularly effective campaigns of all time. Gross, misognyistic, dumb as a rock, fact-free, but just incredibly effective.
Re your last sentence – perfect for this electorate.
Such a pity that women don’t vote… oh, wait, hmmm.
Labor and . . . Greens, minor parties and Independents should refuse to attend Question Time. There has to be a serious commitment to holding LNP Government to account. If the aforementioned parliamentary cushion warmer(s) will do no more than an occasional chastisement . . . what if any point IN ATTENDING?
Australian workers are bleeding. Or more accurately, being bled dry, by this LNP cartel. And at a time whereby our nation and the world at large face diverse challenges that can only further threaten greater desperation, distress. Where is leadership?
Given the ridiculous antics exhibited by the coalition when they were last in opposition (led by the execrable Abbott) that would be a mild – very mild – chastisement.
They could try boycotting parliament, but I doubt that would achieve anything.