Barnaby’s brutal sledge against Sydney on campaign trail

Barnaby Joyce has given Sydney an absolute pasting during a textbook speech that stretched from China to climate change.

Barnaby Joyce has delivered a brutal sledge against Sydney in an extraordinary and impassioned spray about China and climate change.

The Deputy Prime Minister gave the Harbour City a hiding while campaigning in Darwin on Saturday, arguing Labor’s climate policies would whack people in the Top End.

The Business Council of Australia has backed Labor’s climate plans, but Mr Joyce continues to claim the carbon safeguard strategy amounts to a tax.

He urged people to “wake up”.

“You guys are going to pay them the money and there is something perverse about that because you guys are the ones that actually need the money,” he told reporters.

“This is where we’ve got to develop, I know.

“Maybe the Labor Party should come up with a tax that goes in the other direction because they’ve got the Harbour Bridge, they’ve got the Opera House, they’ve got the parks, they’ve got the art galleries, they’ve got all that social infrastructure.”

Mr Joyce then switched gears from climate change to global conflict.

“Here is where we’ve got to be investing because the future of our nation - and we see the geopolitical circumstances before us whether it’s in Ukraine or what the Chinese are trying to do - we need this place to become as strong as possible as quickly as possible,” he said.

“Because we’re not going to defend the nation from an art gallery in Sydney, I can assure you of that.”

Barnaby Joyce says “we’re not going to defend the nation from an art gallery in Sydney”.

Mr Joyce and the National Party are desperate to win the NT seat of Lingiari following the resignation of Labor stalwart Warren Snowdon.

Lingiari, the nation’s largest electorate, spans more than a million square kilometres, covering almost the entire territory bar Darwin and parts of Palmerston.

Labor won the seat with a 5.5 per cent margin in the 2019 federal election.