Wednesday 30 June 2010

Barnaby - the Biassed Bigot - Joyce and his adventures in democracy

Declaration of interest and/or bias:
Miss Eagle is a born and bred Queenslander. She lived under the whole Bjelke-Petersen corrupt police state dictatorship and its aftermath. Needless to say she has little time for the National Party (now, in Queensland, the Liberal National Party). Occasionally there are worthwhile people with worthwhile ideas and Miss Eagle pays attention to them. The person below is not one of them.

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Networkers, did you watch Q & A last Monday night which was titled the Gillard Coup. If not please watch it here. For the transcript, please go here. This Q & A was chaired by Virginia Trioli (best I have seen her both visually and in her facilitation capacity). Panellists were Bill Shorten, Janet Albrechtsen (usually can't stand her but she was brilliant, beautiful and performed well), Magda Szubanski (do political satirists gain insights that the rest of us don't), Harold Mitchell (top value), Christine Wallace (intelligent and informed contributions), and Barnaby Joyce (who was his usual self with the added spice of bigotry and bias). Bios of the panellists are here.

Below is from the transcript. The words display how Barnaby's bias and bigotry and willingness to politicise every breath other people take turned him into a singular creep sniping about people with disabilities. Lower than a snake's belly, you might think?

BILL SHORTEN: I think you’re going to find Prime Minister Gillard will be very good in terms of getting into issues in depth. She is a consensus builder, but I’ll pick an example of an issue which is not a sound bite issue, but the media never cover. That’s the issue of people with disabilities in Australia. Currently we’ve increased the pension for disabled people. We are giving more money to the states. But try and get the media - and to be fair there’s notable exceptions. But no one even - most people don’t even write into this forum about disability, yet there’s two million Australians who are full-time carers or have a severe or profound disability. We’re currently debating with the productivity commission creating a national disability insurance scheme. It would be good if not just the government, and we’re doing out bit, but if the community at large would help all those carers and all those people with disabilities and stand up for a national disability insurance scheme. It’s not as sexy issue but it’s at least as important as anything else we’ve spoken about tonight.

BARNABY JOYCE: And that is a perfect - and that is a perfect example given to you tonight by Bill Shorten of how you change the question around and give a line.

MAGDA SZUBANSKI: Not for people who are looking after disabled people (indistinct)...

BARNABY JOYCE: Yeah, I know, but the question was not about disabled people. But how did disabled people come into that answer?

BILL SHORTEN: Because we never get to talk about them Barnaby and if you guys talked more about disabilities on the opposition as we should in government and more people in the media spoke about it then maybe people with disabilities wouldn’t get such a dud deal. That’s all I speak about. I’ve given 200 speeches in parliament...

BARNABY JOYCE: Yeah, you moved the agenda to there for a pacific(sic) purpose and that is typical politics.

CHRISTINE WALLACE: Listen, that’s really rough to accuse him of being cynical and spinning on disability. That’s pretty rough.

I would like to see Barnaby the Biassed Bigot kept off Q & A for the duration. Free speech you say? Good communicator you say?

I refer you back to my disclosure at the beginning of this post.

You see, dear Networkers, many of us can still remember how the representatives of the media built up Joh Bjelke Petersen. They laughed at his jokes and his incomprehensible way of speaking. He had a wily press secretary well known in Queensland so that helped. And thereby hangs a tale for another day. The media - particularly in the form of Chris Masters and Quentin Dempster - might have destroyed Bjelke Petersen and his National Party henchpersons but they had first given him and them a lot of oxygen and a lot of space and so built him and them up into what he/they became.

I would hate to see the same thing repeated with Barnaby Joyce. If it did, it would not be merely the Queensland media who would do it but the capital city denizens.

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