High profile Aussie slammed for getting Albo’s name wrong

A high profile Australian has been slammed for getting Anthony Albanese’s name wrong dozens of times during a major speech.

Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce used his press club address to promote the Coalition’s funding commitments for regional Australia. Picture: NCA Newswire/ Andrew Taylor

Barnaby Joyce has failed to correctly pronounce Anthony Albanese’s name during a major speech.

The deputy prime minister savaged Labor’s climate and energy policies during an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday.

But every time he mentioned the Opposition Leader’s name, he pronounced it wrong.

Mr Albanese has pronounced his name several different ways throughout his career, but none of them bore any resemblance to Mr Joyce’s dozens of attempts.

We chat to the potential future lead of the ALP @AlboMP about his vision for Australia, his hopes for leadership and he finally settles the correct pronunciation of his name. #TheProjectTVpic.twitter.com/HQ9JmSCz8O

— The Project (@theprojecttv) May 22, 2019

A bloody nose forced Mr Joyce to take a brief intermission while addressing the press club.

The Deputy Prime Minister had to step away from the podium while he was taking questions from journalists on Wednesday.

A sniffling Mr Joyce dabbed at his nose with a tissue as he was asked about whether the Coalition between the Liberals and Nationals was made vulnerable by their rift over climate change and a net zero emissions target.

Barnaby Joyce wipes his bloody nose.

And then tries to stop the flow.

“Don’t you love you get a bleeding nose in the press club?” Mr Joyce joked before forging ahead with his answer: “Anyway. No, it doesn’t”.

“Because what we are doing is … we have got to make sure our nation earns as much money as possible. We can’t do that if we shut down coal exports,” he said.

Mr Joyce’s nose started bleeding more profusely while he was answering a follow-up question from the same journalist about a prospective coal fired power station in central Queensland.

Some Nationals MPs have thrown their support behind the Collinsville plant after the Morrison controversially committed $3.6m to Shine Energy in 2020 to conduct a feasibility study into the project.

Climate change is a problem for the Coalition because the Liberals need to curry favour with more progressive voters while maintaining a working partnership with pro-coal Nationals who are prone to breaking government ranks on net zero.

The event’s host, ABC journalist Jane Norman, intervened by saying: “I might pause for a moment because, Mr Joyce, I apologise, you are on stage with a blood nose”.

“Here are some tissues if you’d like to just move away for a moment,” she said.

Mr Joyce composed himself off to the one side of the stage and then returned to the lectern to persevere with the question-and-answer session.

“I know you are going to get 1001 photos of me with a Kleenex up my nose, congratulations,” he said, after being handed a fresh tissue.

Responding to another journalist’s question later in the event, Mr Joyce suggested he was best known around Australia for “Johnny Depp’s dogs”.

The quip was a reference to the widely-publicised spat of 2015 between Mr Joyce, who was then agriculture minister, and Depp and his then partner Amber Heard, after the Hollywood actors brought their two Yorkshire terriers to Australia without permission.

Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce used his press club speech to promote the Coalition’s policies for regional Australia. Picture: NCA Newswire/ Andrew Taylor

Mr Joyce used his press club address on Wednesday to announce the Coalition would expand Australia’s merchant fleet to counter instability in the Pacific region.

He said Chinese military expansion was the biggest issue facing Australians “without a shadow of a doubt”.

Concerns over Chinese expansion in the Pacific have overshadowed parts of the election campaign after Beijing and Solomon Islands signed a contentious security agreement despite Australia’s efforts to stop it.

Mr Joyce said he had been aware of Beijing’s ambitions “for quite some time”, going back to issues of foreign ownership in Australia more than 10 years ago.

“I refer to my successful endeavours to stop a Chinese state owned enterprise takeover of Rio Tinto, our largest iron ore exporter, back as far as 2009,” Mr Joyce told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

“Later, my support (for) changes in foreign investment laws which the Labor Party opposed.”

Earlier in his speech, Mr Joyce talked up the Morrison government’s regional funding commitments, including $1.5bn for an industrial facility at Middle Arm in Darwin Harbour.

It has been suggested the Middle Arm wharf could be used by Defence as an alternative to the existing Port of Darwin, which was controversially leased by the Northern Territory’s then-Country Liberal government to a Chinese-owned company.

Mr Joyce steered clear of mentioning the Port of Darwin but used his speech to paint the Coalition as the better option for voters on national security and the economy.

He also announced $132m in manufacturing grants which he said would go towards “making our nation as strong as possible as quickly as possible”.