Politics

Battle Of The Gronks: The Deputy Prime Minister Zinged Barnaby Joyce Over His Affair

Always fun to see Barnaby get sledged.

by Joseph Earp  12 March 2019
barnaby joyce

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Most of the time, watching Australian politicians squabble is like watching a pair of divorced dads throw down in a dance battle.

After all, our Parliament is almost exclusively comprised of massive dingleberries, career politicians you wouldn’t trust with guarding a peach pie on a windowsill, much less an entire country.

Whether it’s Bill “How Do You Do Kids” Shorten trying to get one off on Scott “I’m Afraid Of Women” Morrison, or Malcolm “Top Hat” Turnbull sniping at Tony “Walking Horror” Abbott, there’s a kind of desperate sadness to watching walking suits of dandruff mud wrestle in the view of the whole world. To borrow the tagline from 2004’s Alien Vs. Predator, in such spats, no matter who wins, we lose.

For that reason, whenever one of our corporate ghouls does manage to get a zing off on another, it’s a cause for celebration — particularly when the zingee is noted gronk Barnaby Joyce.

The most recent spat is between Joyce, ex-leader of The Nationals, and Michael McCormack, the current leader of the party. This is not necessarily surprising, given Joyce has been in a stoush with pretty much everyone as of late. Ever since the news that he had conducted an affair with a former staffer, Vikki Campion, broke in February of last year and forced him to resign from the party, Joyce has aggressively Abotted himself — throwing shade at former colleagues and foes alike.

Ostensibly, Joyce’s problem with McCormack is that McCormack isn’t doing enough to help coal power plants in Queensland, and that he is going soft on the issue due to the party’s “marriage” to the Liberals.

But, given Joyce’s whinging has ramped over the last few weeks, some believe that he’s gearing up for a potential spill against McCormack. Joyce himself hasn’t helped such rumours, telling the ABC that, “If there was a spill and the position’s vacant, I am the elected deputy prime minister of Australia, so I’d have no guilt at all in standing.”

Anyway, McCormack is understandably feeling the heat, and rather than taking all this Joycean nonsense, has decided to hit back.

“I understand when you have a marriage that it’s a two-way relationship,” he told the press, referring to the marriage between the Liberals and Nationals. “You don’t always get what you want but you have to work together to build better outcomes for your family.

“I understand what it takes to have a successful marriage and to make sure that we work together to build a better Australia,” he concluded, coolly dropping a devastating burn against a man with surely one of the most renowned affairs in contemporary politics.

Listen, McCormack is no saint. But credit where credit is due: that’s one helluva clap back.