Look over there! Bad boy Barnaby is the real story unless, er, it’s about women after all

The Tele was wrong to put Barnaby’s girlfriend on the front page. Kate Doak, Twitter, on Wednesday:

Big photo of Barnaby on the front page rather than one of his new partner would have been a bit more tasteful. He’s the main mischief maker.

Talking about it ropes in the women and they haven’t been naughty. Malcolm Turnbull, Herald Sun, Friday:

It is a tough and distressing episode and I am very conscious — Lucy and I are very conscious — of the hurt occasioned to Natalie and their daughters in particular.

But let’s make it a woman story anyway. Clementine Ford, SMH, Thursday:

If this were a 50-year-old woman — hell, if it were a 40-year-old woman — whose sexual relationship with a much younger subordinate male employee were exposed, she would be crucified by the press and the public.

Julia Baird, SMH, Saturday:

Julia Gillard was judged repeatedly for being “barren”; Joyce was ignored for being fertile. To repeat: a woman doing nothing was the subject of public attack, while a man creating an actual baby with a woman other than his wife is a “private matter”.

Baird also dredges up the outing of Gareth Evans-Cheryl Kernot affair:

Evans has received an Order of Australia; she is still fielding calls about their relationship (yes from me, too). She is the scarlet woman; he is the statesman with a blip in his past, not to be mentioned in polite company.

And Miranda Devine offers a twist on the double standard argument. Sunday Telegraph yesterday:

Barnaby hasn’t been an easy dog to keep on the porch, as Hillary Clinton once put it, but Natalie has persevered, understanding that highs and lows are part of his personality. “He always comes back”, she’s told friends.

But this baby creates an exquisite dilemma. Do you act like a faithless bastard by leaving your wife of 24 years and four children, or by abandoning your mistress and unborn child? In this #metoo era it would have looked worse if he had walked away from the pregnant staffer. Worse, still, if he’d pushed for an abortion.

For satirical website The Shovel, it was about female squeamishness:

Calls For National Sick Day After Nation Forced To Imagine Barnaby Joyce Having Sex

So, Western Civ is obviously in decline. Look to Elizabeth Farrelly for perspective. SMH, Saturday:

Egregious, despicable and morally inexcusable, the leaf blower represents the triumph of utility over beauty, of the individual over the collective, the synthetic over nature and science over soul. In short, it represents all our collective errors since the Renaissance.

In other environmental news, the South African city of Capetown is fast approaching the day when it runs dry of water. The Times of London, Saturday:

Nigel Casey, the British high commissioner, urged guests at a cocktail party at his residence in Bishopscourt to urinate in the gardens rather than flushing the toilets — as long as they avoided the electric security fence around the property. He added: “Please don’t drink any water. There’s plenty of wine, whisky and beer.”

Hope nobody moved to Capetown to escape Perth’s own water crisis. SMH, 2005:

“Perth is facing the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the city’s water supply,” says Tim Flannery, director of the South Australian Museum and Australia’s most high profile scientist and ecologist.