Barnaby Joyce is as dinky-di as they come
LOCALS from Barnaby Joyce’s town of Tamworth aren’t going to let a citizenship kerfuffle take him away from them, writes Caroline Marcus.
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THERE was a surreal moment during the town of Inverell’s Sapphire Festival parade on the weekend that really highlighted the stark divide between city and country folk.
A float atop which squatted a white Aussie bloke dressed up as a Chinese man during the Gold Rush — complete with conical straw hat and fake black moustache — trundled past us, its star act pressing his palms together in prayer and bowing theatrically as he caught our eye.
This was closely followed by another float carrying a big burly man dressed as a cowgirl, blowing us kisses, then a truck of local garbos, also all inexplicably dressed in drag.
Had this been inner Sydney, and not a northern NSW town bordering Queensland, it’s easy to imagine how this may have played out.
Without doubt, there would have been calls for the event to be shut down and participating businesses boycotted, with accusations of racism, cultural appropriation and transphobia consuming Twitter and Change.org petitioners for days.
Instead, in Inverell, these humble country folk just enjoyed their parade.
Later, the candidate for the New England by-election — until Friday, Australia’s second most powerful man — stopped by the local park for the festival’s closing party, even crowning the local Sapphire princesses.
Barnaby Joyce’s former seat of New England is a galaxy away from the Canberra bubble, where pundits and press gallery journalists seem to believe everyone is as engrossed as they are with the minutiae of the legal interpretation of section 44.
I’ve spent the past few days in this electorate for Sky News — my third trip this year alone — and I can tell you that here, there’s no question Joyce is as dinky-di as they come.
Most locals are scratching their heads as to how the recently-resigned senator Nick Xenophon could be ruled eligible by the High Court but not Their Barnaby, when both cases were a question of citizenship by descent.
More folk than I could possibly count have told me the by-election is a complete waste of money; they’re peeved at having to go back to the polls yet again, but they intend to vote en masse for their former member.
While Labor is keen to present the Nationals as sloppy law-breakers — what with fellow senator Fiona Nash also a High Court casualty — locals reckon the whole exercise is a costly joke, and empathise with Joyce, who they see as the butt of it.
It leads me to the conclusion that the government’s proposed Constitutional amendments to avoid this debacle in future may be welcomed by the wider voting public, and not just in the Nationals’ heartland.
I expect, though, there’d be far less sympathy for former Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters, as well as One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, given all were born overseas and really should have had the foresight to check or in Roberts’ case, make sure.
One big downside of the citizenship imbroglio for the Queensland LNP is that it’s likely to suffer in the absence of the popular Joyce from the hustings.
While Joyce would have ordinarily helped out his state colleagues, having previously served as a Queensland senator, he’s already said he won’t be distracted from his own patch ahead of the crucial December 2 by-election.
But back to Section 44, it stands to reason that if someone has a second passport, he or she should give it up to run for parliament.
But in a relatively new country like Australia, there should be wiggle room for cases like Joyce’s that are less clear-cut.
Ordinary Australians would be far more concerned by the duelling allegiances fostered by foreign donations, as in the case of Labor’s Sam Dastyari, who was forced to resign from the frontbench after it was revealed he’d asked a company with links to Beijing to cover his expenses.
As Labor’s then chief fundraiser in NSW, Dastyari told Chinese media that Australia shouldn’t meddle in the South China Sea during last year’s federal election, a direct contradiction of his party’s official line.
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He made the controversial comments at a press conference held exclusively for Chinese media, standing next to Chinese donor Huang Xiangmo, a day after Xiangmo withdrew a promise to donate $400,000 to the ALP.
The Coalition isn’t exempt from such questionable behaviour, either.
Former trade minister Andrew Robb has been accused of accepting a large donation for his personal campaign fund from Xiangmo the same day a free trade deal with China was signed.
It wasn’t a great look either when Robb left politics and started a part-time consultancy gig reportedly worth $880,000 a year for Chinese-owned company Landbridge Group, which has a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin, the day before the 2016 election.
Then again, if Inverell needs more participants on its most contentious float for next year’s parade, there are two obvious recruits.
Caroline Marcus is a journalist with Sky News.