The Sketch: Is Barnaby Joyce bordering on the incongruous?

Barnaby Joyce in question time in August. Picture: Gary Ramage

It always comes back to borders — who patrols them, who controls them, who still buys books from them.

“This is Daniel from North Korea-oria,” Barnaby Joyce said, aiming to pop the confusion around the surprise Victoria- New Zealand travel bubble.

Who better to weigh in than a former Kiwi himself!

“He’s completely and utterly decided that … his rights are better than anybody else’s … he just seems to preside as some sort of, you know, Kim il-Dan,” Joyce riffed on behalf of his yet-to-be-located compatriots.

“And you would have seen the rugby on the weekend — unfortunately we lost. New Zealand doesn’t have a problem.”

Hang on — we? Double ewe … e? If it’s sporting standards we’re going by, Victoria doesn’t have a problem either. The Melbourne Vixens took home their first Super Netball title on Sunday; Richmond or Geelong will win the AFL and the Storm is a 50-50 chance in the NRL.

The once-closest dual citizen dug in. Like the Infrastructure Department on the inflated $30m spent on a piece of Western Sydney land worth $3m, he’s decided there’s not much to see here.

“Mate, what are you worried about? They’re coming from a place where there’s no corona­virus. What do you think you’re going to catch off them? Bad breath, pimples?”

“If it’s not a problem, as Barnaby says, why is Scott Morrison so busy blaming the state premiers?” Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon inquired.

What does Australian Border Force boss Michael Outram make of the Daniel Andrews statement that Victoria had not opted to be in the New Zealand flight fizz (travel bubble)?

“They are not,” Outram helpfully told estimates. “The bubble stops at the international terminal at Sydney airport” and “doesn’t extend across the road to the domestic terminal, it doesn’t extend down the Federal Highway to the Victorian border”.

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton told a press conference on October 3: “New Zealanders are free to come to Victoria, the question is what the requirements are on arrival in Australia and so the travel bubble as I understand it is that there’s no quarantine requirement for those coming from New Zealand because of the risk status of New Zealand … Victoria’s open.”

Josh Frydenberg was also keen to blow in. The Treasurer hasn’t set foot in Danistan since August 8, but that didn’t stop him from accusing the Premier of “callous indifference” and “making it up as he goes”.

Andrews appeared for his 109th straight daily press briefing on Monday, and followed Frydenberg into ye olde political land of Passive Aggressiva.

“It’s all about the politics with this bloke, isn’t it?” Andrews said. “That’s all he does … he is not a leader, he is just a Liberal because all he does is play politics in the midst of a global pandemic.”

Fragments of Frydenberg’s dig-dong with former premier Jay Weatherill at an accidental joint press conference in 2017, when a journalist helpfully set the mood: “Minister, is this a bit awkward?”

“No!” Frydenberg exclaimed, deploying a chuckle of such incongruous heartiness it may as well have been a bell dinging on a lie detector.

“It’s about to be,” Weatherill said.

Hindsight is 2020, literally.