Barnaby Joyce owes me a beer

Barnaby Joyce stole my beer. More importantly, Pauline Hanson is trying to steal the Australian soul with her moronculturalism. Monte Dwyer with story.

A few years ago I attended the victory party of a friend who won a seat in the State Parliament. It was a raucous affair, as winners’ parties were, and fighting on the way to the bar was not for the faint of heart. As a result, when I returned to my group with a new round, I was less than impressed when Barnaby Joyce, who had intervened, took one of the beers – my own as it ran out – and forced me to queue at the bar again.

Fast forward about ten years and I recently had the opportunity to remind Barnaby that he still owed me that beer, he got angry at the imposition and turned his back on me. It was rude, yes, and if it wasn’t a funeral I might have pushed the issue further, just to see if I could make him blush even more.

Now he’s hitched his wagon to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, helping to give Australia its own version of the US’s MAGA, or the UK’s Reform, or whatever form of right-wing politics you want to equate.

odd couple

This is not a marriage made in heaven. Hanson is leading with a chip on his shoulder and a bit of grievance between his teeth – see his “trashy journalist” attack on respected Guardian newspaper writer Sarah Martin for reference – and I expect his One Nation Party to implode again like many QLD State Parliament seats in 1998; especially now that most of the city is courting her (note the talented drones, Pauline, and even the Israeli-owned, Australian-made drones).

If there’s one thing this country doesn’t need, it’s more Israeli influence. Thank you again, Ms. Rinehart.

Barnaby is a completely different tomato. He is a career politician who knows an opportunity when he sees one, and he is keenly aware of the winds of populism sweeping the world. It certainly didn’t appeal to One Nation because of its policies; Even he couldn’t explain the difference between “multiracial” and “multicultural” or how he hoped to achieve his boss’s stated goal of “monoculturalism” 250 years after the horse ran away.

No, I suspect Barnaby joined One Nation because he was reading in the great hall. People around the world are avoiding mainstream political parties and looking for quick-fix alternatives, and Barnaby is positioning itself to benefit from this trend.

To this point, I recently took a road trip through the ‘red’ states of the US and tried to understand why Americans voted for Trump for a second term. From my perspective, his questionable behavior during his first term alone should have disqualified him from any other post in the White House. I was wrong though.

Among the many causal factors I discovered were disenfranchised voters who were so desperate for change that they fell in love with an unpredictable trickster with criminal tendencies and self-serving motives and made him their president (again). And now they are in such disarray domestically and geopolitically that it is difficult to see any positive outcome for the American people (except for the Epstein class, of course).

Make Australia Great Again

We’ve been hearing rumblings lately that Australia is heading down the same path.

Leaving aside the fact that we have a much better parliamentary system and are less likely to result in a head of state resorting to subterfuge and making (bad) unilateral decisions, it is true that many people are disillusioned with the status quo and are looking for a messianic alternative with simple messages that everyone can understand. But there’s a cautionary tale here. As the American journalist and social commentator HL Mencken observed nearly a century ago:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President more and more closely represents the inner spirit of the people. On some great and glorious day, the common people of the country will finally achieve their heart’s desire, and the White House will be occupied by an outright idiot and a complete narcissistic moron.”

Democracy is under threat all over the world. As our attention span shortens, we become less inclined to think deeply and consider alternative perspectives. We want our information to be delivered short, sweet, and with confirmation bias. This creates fertile ground for populist politics, where clever vocalization becomes more important than the message itself.

And it’s tempting to believe that there really is a simple solution to the complex management issue. But no. Managing people is complex. Solving problems requires clear thinking, time and ideally experience. I have yet to see a populist movement prepared to apply anything resembling these qualities for the good of humanity.

So whether Barnaby and Pauline live happily ever after or not, she’ll be doing herself a favor by remembering that most Australians still believe in a fair verdict, and that means shouting when it’s your turn.

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