Will the Joyce and Turnbull controversy end like 2010s Rudd and Gillard stoush ended?

WILL the Joyce and Turnbull controversy end the same way 2010s Rudd and Gillard stoush ended? Either way, with these Canberra shenanigans, anything put in writing could be swiftly overtaken, writes TIM BLAIR.

WRITING a column about current political shenanigans in Canberra is a little like reporting from the Somme in 1916. The likelihood is that anything written will be completely overtaken by events, possibly within moments.

Apologies in advance, then, if matters have escalated during the time between submission and publication.

It could be that Malcolm Turnbull has since called another ruinous press conference, after which National Party forces loyal to Barnaby Joyce surrounded the Prime Minister’s Point Piper property with tractors and combine harvesters, chanting “love is love” and demanding mistress protection laws.

Nobody can possibly know how all of this will end, but it might help to review how the Joyce controversy evolved.

With all the shenanigans in Canberra, events are changing at a fast pace. Artwork: John Tiedemann

Rumours began to spread throughout New England and online late last year that the Deputy Prime Minister was involved in an affair with a staffer and had been thrown out of the family home.

Joyce admitted nothing when questioned by journalists, and evidence of the affair was insufficient for any substantial reporting.

More damagingly still, Turnbull during the same press conference declared that Joyce had made a ‘shocking error of judgment’, causing ‘terrible hurt and humiliation’ and creating a “world of woe” for all the women involved.

Solid evidence then emerged in the form of former Joyce staffer Vikki Campion walking around Canberra in an advanced state of up-duffedness, leading to The Daily Telegraph’s front-page revelations.

Joyce appeared on 7.30, giving the word “private” its greatest media workout since ABC salaries were exposed in 2013.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

Joyce’s privacy defence crumbled when it was revealed that Campion, subsequent to her affair with Joyce, had been placed in newly created jobs with other National Party MPs.

At this point, however, we were still looking at a relatively standard scandal, the sort of thing that is survivable — at the cost, obviously, of considerable embarrassment.

Malcolm Turnbull, genius, then announced a ban on sex between ministers and staffers.

Exactly how this will be enforced absent security cameras, medical tests and the testimony of government-appointed chaperones remains unclear.

The urban view of Joyce was last week summarised by Fairfax’s Jack Waterford: ‘Joyce richly deserves to be thrown out of public life as a terrible party leader, a terrible politician and a person who habitually demonstrates an incapacity for judgment about the public interest.’

More damagingly still, Turnbull during the same press conference declared that Joyce had made a “shocking error of judgment”, causing “terrible hurt and humiliation” and creating a “world of woe” for all the women involved. Joyce had, Turnbull said, “appalled all of us”.

It is important to remember here that city folk, and there are few Australians more citified than Turnbull (inheritor of a truly beautiful Hunter Valley farm he rarely visits), do not get Barnaby Joyce. His popularity in the regions is as inexplicable to them as is Nick Xenophon’s appeal to anyone living outside South Australia.

Or, indeed, to anyone living inside South Australia and measurably ­sentient.

The urban view of Joyce was last week summarised by Fairfax’s Jack Waterford: “Joyce richly deserves to be thrown out of public life as a terrible party leader, a terrible politician and a person who habitually demonstrates an incapacity for judgment about the public interest.”

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce (right) speaks to supporters at an anti carbon tax rally in Port Macquarie last November.

To put it mildly, Joyce’s rural supporters do not agree.

Turnbull’s extravagant condemnation of Joyce gave licence for those supporters to rally behind the Nationals leader.

“He may be a fool but he’s our fool,” Randy Newman sang in 1974’s Rednecks, offering a southern perspective on vilified Georgia governor Lester Maddox. “If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong.” That’s pretty close to the general sentiment among Joyce’s people, who know their man has erred but cannot accept Turnbull’s crushing verdict.

There’s a reason why Labor is screaming so loudly for Turnbull to fire Joyce (he can’t, of course) and it isn’t because he’s a liability.

Joyce is a conservative asset, as was shown in the 2016 election, when the Libs lost 13 seats as the Nats marginally increased their vote and picked up an extra representative in the lower house.

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The precise tone and content of Turnbull’s Saturday meeting with Joyce, following the Nationals leader’s understandable description of the PM’s comments as “inept”, probably will not be known until the government is in opposition.

For now, it’s said the meeting was “productive”, which could be code for “no skeletal damage was sustained and the carpet proved impressively blood-absorbent”.

The best clue as to how this all might conclude was possibly provided by Labor’s Richard Marles. “The idea that you’ve got Number One and Number Two fighting with each other so overtly is unprecedented,” Marles told Sky News yesterday, apparently forgetting the 2010 brawl between prime minister Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard.

That all ended productively, didn’t it?

RUSSIAN MEDDLING TAME

THE full, terrifying extent of Russian interference in the 2016 US election is now revealed. It emerges that Russians — wait for it — organised demonstrations.

And they spent a colossal $100,000 or so posting stuff online, a figure that, as Republican Roy Blunt pointed out last year, amounts to only about “five one-thousandths of 1 per cent” of the $81 million spent on social media by the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns.

More than a dozen various Yevgeniys, Mikhails, Sergeys, Irinas and Vladimirs have been indicted over their alleged interference, which began in 2014 (before Trump announced his candidacy) and included demonstrations for and against the President.

By the standards of historic Russian discord-sowing, 2016’s efforts were incredibly tame, writes Tim Blair.

The “strategic goal” of these Russians, according the indictment, was to “sow discord in the US political system”, which has been standard Soviet/Russian practice since forever.

By the standards of historic Russian discord-sowing, in fact, 2016’s efforts were incredibly tame.

Does nobody remember the Soviet Union placing missiles in Cuba?

Russian meddling in 2016 seems only slightly greater than Australian meddling.

The ALP was recently fined $14,500 by the US Federal Election Commission after a Labor staffer was caught in New Hampshire vandalising Trump election signs.

Former ANU Labor Club president Ben Kramer was among a number of Labor delegates who volunteered with the unsuccessful Bernie Sanders campaign.

MAYBE SELF-DEPORTATION IS THE ANSWER

SAFE Schools socialist Roz Ward lately defended Aboriginal activist Tarneen Onus-Williams, who told an Australia Day rally: “We have organised this to abolish Australia Day because f ... Australia.”

“It wasn’t a surprise that the Murdoch empire would strike back with a concerted campaign against Tarneen,” Ward wrote.

“When the Murdoch press led the campaign against Safe Schools, they focused on my personal involvement in the program (and) described me as a ‘hard line Marxist’.”

That would be because Ward is a hard line Marxist. Moreover, this piece appeared in the Socialist Alternative’s Red Flag, which believes a “revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is the solution”. “They deployed ammunition in words,” Ward continued. “Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Janet Albrechtsen and others were wound up by their editors to spin the narrative.” As it happens, I’d been at a mate’s place playing cricket on Australia Day and posted my first item on Tarneen the following morning. No editorial directives were involved.

Writing about another ally, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Ward seethed: “Bigot MP George Christensen suggested self-deportation might be the answer.” Which is exactly what Abdel-Magied did, fleeing to London.

Ward signed off with a sarcastic reference to “the great nation of Australia”.

It would be greater if she also followed Christensen’s fine advice.