Let us, for a moment, take Barnaby Joyce as a serious person. There is good reason for this. Unconstrained by office or position, now teetotal and unable to blame his mishaps on mixing his meats, Joyce is free to say what his Coalition colleagues are thinking. He is Peter Dutton’s Id, that primitive instinct expressing all the unconscious drives that are, for a leader, held back by Ego, Superego and black-framed spectacles.

Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit:

In Joyce’s spring newsletter to his New England constituents, titled “Getting It Done” (no explanation of what “It” is, but that’s all part of being an Id), much is predictable. There are lots of photos featuring a hat. There’s the rough and ready grammar and spelling. Joyce is pictured “Laying the Reath” at a military memorial. And this sentence is a good argument for the desirability of artificial intelligence: “There are some exciting opportunities if a Coalition government is elected for our electorate on the horizon, and one of these is host to secure, reliable energy production.” I might sound elitist in criticising Joyce’s English, but I wasn’t the one who went to St Ignatius College, Riverview.

Money doesn’t buy everything. But to disguise one’s literacy is probably a good play in “retail politics”.

Anyhoo. The thing that stands out like bull’s balls is the fear of teals and independents. After a plug for Gina’s “Iron Ore”, the main missive is a diatribe against independent politicians. If the Great Teal Terror extends all the way to Tamworth, where can it stop?

“A hung parliament, which is generally chaotic, is on the cards,” the former deputy prime minister,........

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