After reading this piece by Jacqueline Maley titled “The Barnaby Joyce affair: when men make abysmal choices women pay the price,” I’m more than a little exercised.
Yes, it is true that Joyce’s lover, Vikki Campion, may well find herself unemployable whilst Joyce seems (at this moment, who knows about the next) relatively secure in his employment.
Yes, it is true that Natalie Joyce gave up her own ambitions to support her husband and raise their children, only to be catastrophically derailed when Joyce met someone else.
But for the love of the goddess, neither woman was forced at gun point to make the choices she made. We are not helpless. We are not fucking helpless. There are millions of women who refuse the traditional heteronormative couple experience and the price it can extract from us, and do something different.
When I was very young, I married a man who was an executive in an oil company. My life was that of a company wife. It was the most utterly abysmal period of my adult life, and after thirteen years and two children I said, fuck this for a lark, and ended it.
My standard of living plunged. My children hated me. But I felt, for the first time in a long time, that I was living an honest life, a life on my terms.
A woman decides that what she most wants is to attach herself to a man whose ambitions and self-realisation will always matter more than hers. Why do so many of us choose that self-abnegation? And isn’t it about time we took responsibility for that choice?
And before you tell me that we are indoctrinated, let me tell you that if anyone could be considered indoctrinated it’s me. I survived years of childhood sexual abuse that taught me, amongst many other things, that girls and women are chattels. That girls and women must do what men want when they want it. That girls and women exist to give men what they say they want and need, and that our own lives are as nothing in comparison. This is what I learned.
But at some point, a woman has to rise up and say, fuck that for a lark. At some point, every woman has to rise up and take responsibility for her one life on earth. And were I to say anything to Ms Campion and Mrs Joyce, it would be, rise up and take responsibility for your one life on earth, because that is your most vital duty, to yourself and to your children.
Yes, it is true that when men make abysmal choices women pay the price. And yes, it is true that the only people who can change this are women, because there is no incentive at all for men to interfere with the status quo.
No Place For Sheep 
Nicely said. I’m a 71yo white male [per the now compulsory disclaimer] and witnessed many male friends left by their wives in circumstances I now recognise, in retrospect, as similar to yours. The breakups were a surprise to the men, and to me. The wives were seeking a life it seems. It put the fear of god into me because I knew both parties and couldn’t understand why the blokes [whom I could only assume were reasonably decent] were being dumped. Was I next. What were we men doing wrong?
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I agree up to a point, Jennifer, and the point is that not all women can rise above their circumstances, no matter how much they might want to do so. At the same time, as much as men benefit from the status quo, from another perspective, they don’t.
Inequality is bad for everyone. Men lead lives that can limit them, particularly the requirement to ‘be a man’ and to block out the more vulnerable aspects of their lives.
I’m not a supporter of men. I recognise they get a better deal in the main, but I also think lives are complex and not every person can be as strong and able as they would ideally be and stand up for themselves, men and women alike. It’s hard for us all to wriggle our way out of this abysmal patriarchy, under which we continue to live.
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Yes, Elisabeth, I though about your first point as I was writing the piece.
I also thought that we perhaps don’t hear enough from women who’ve moved from being victims to being survivors, I know there are very, very many, and for some reason those voices aren’t as evident in the public discourse.
We hear all the time how hard it is, and I know that only too well. Somebody has to start saying, it’s also possible, otherwise all we ever hear are stories of female helplessness and victimisation.
We often read of/see stories of triumph over physical disability, for example, and nobody says, well, not everyone can do that, not everyone can rise above those difficulties.
Just for once I would like women who have taken ownership of our lives after childhood abuse to be given a voice without any rebukes about how not everyone can do that.
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Sure Jennifer, here I agree. There are not so many voices that tell us how its done without resort to the unfairness of it all, though Sydney Wayland Smith (author of The Lost Woman) is working on a piece on resilience and in the process interviewing several women who’ve had a hard time of it and hopefully she won’t go on ad nauseam about what a hard time we’ve had. Instead, I expect she’ll focus on how we changed that. Who wants to be a victim or a bull? I reckon the existence of both victims and perpetrators is a serious problem for all of us, hence I enjoy people like Jessica Benjamin, an American psychoanalyst, who pleads for what she calls the growth of ‘a moral third’, an inner aspect in all of us that can break the vicious cycle of victimhood and predation and all the associated dualities of black and white, good and bad etc.
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She seems to have no idea that the women made bad choices too.
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Fucking Baaaarnaby would seem to be a poor choice.
But who knows but her. She may have seen it as a way of sleeping herself to the top; the apparent failure of such a ploy would then have been her decision alone.
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Sadly Fairfax have thwarted my attempts to read Maley here and elsewhere.
I take it she is doing a sob for demographic reasons to do with circulation- massaging the demographic.
So, I have to fly blind.
I believe we are all entrapped in roles inscribed in subtle ways from birth inscribed consciously and unconsciously upon us that can limit us and make us feel inadequate prisoners at times. Firstly, Joyce.
He seems hamstrung by a masculinity that has him individuated against self examination, a company man who somehow has become alienated from women,despite the bonking which is substitute for something more meaningful ( Abbott comes to mind)This lack of self reflexivity has finally bought him crashing down…happens to so many people and has happened to this writer.
His wife is probably a conventional woman, likely brought up to the old role of wife and mother, some thing from a different age with us since the Industrial Revolution and earlier, something compounded by early mortality rates that obviated the need for decisions we have to make, heading toward seventy or eighty as an old age, that our era is too early inits infancy to have provided solutions for.
His mistress has tried to be “modern”, to be assertive yet passive after the Mia Freedman stereotype. She is likely brought up with middle class values that propagate a sense of materialism, but fulfillment postponed in the service of the system (a bit like Joyce perhaps?). I suppose the type I read her as leaves me a bit cold, but in truth, like Joyce, she may well in the end “grow up” as adult responsibilities and a little adversity challenge and find her real self.
Jennifer Wilson, my mother was a bit like you. She walked away from a deadening conflictive marriage after thirteen years and blossomed for it. Perhaps it also the case with the other women commenting.
My dad took longer to recover but salvaged a few things from his life. Like myself and my brother, a servant to his role to some extent and if women are also subjected to a sort of penal servitude of the mind, may some salvation come for them also.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
I would love to have read the Maley piece first, but Fairfax kyboshed that.
Can someone who has read it tell me if it had something substantial to offer, or it was just another victimhood entitlement grumble, of the sort that may have appealed a wannabe reading that paper.?
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Here you are PW. The Maley article:
The Barnaby Joyce scandal is a horrible saga, with so many grubby angles to it, that even after observing it for a week you feel you need a shower, or at least a break. Wife, mistress, children born and unborn: all are collateral damage.
As a clearly furious Malcolm Turnbull described it on Thursday, in an extraordinary press conference, Joyce has “set off a world of woe” on his family, and “appalled all of us” with his behaviour, as well as raising “very serious issues about the culture” of Parliament House as a workplace.
What a sad, sorry tale. There are no winners in all this, right? Only losers.
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But, to misquote George Orwell, some losers are more equal than others.
At the moment, the man at the centre of the scandal retains his position, his salary, the support of his National Party colleagues. And as he showed in his extraordinary press conference on Friday, he is digging in.
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On Thursday it was announced Joyce would take leave next week, so everyone can dodge the embarrassment of him as acting prime minister in the midst of the storm.
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The situation is precarious. But, for the moment at least, Joyce looks set to continue in his job while his new partner cares for their newborn, free of any questions of how he will manage to balance a demanding role with new fatherhood, not to mention any aspersions cast about his capacity to work efficiently against the backdrop of such a cripplingly complex family situation.
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announces changes to the ministerial code of conduct.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announces changes to the ministerial code of conduct. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Joyce also appears to face zero consequences under the ministerial code of conduct, because the Prime Minister accepts, however reluctantly, that Joyce’s pregnant lover was not technically his “partner” at the relevant times of her employment in ministerial offices, including his own.
There is no doubt Joyce is suffering great humiliation and distress. It is written on his face. It’s probably a good thing he has a week of (one assumes paid) leave to gather himself.
One New England voter put it well this week when she told Fairfax Media reporter Michael Koziol: “You have to live with the choices you make.”
But for women it is still the case, even in the pro-feminist 21st century, that they also live with the choices their men make.
Women pay the consequences for men’s failures and weaknesses far more often than the reverse is true.
Let’s compare the toll on the women in Joyce’s life to the toll on him so far.
Vikki Campion left her job as a political staffer after it became impossible to deny her relationship with Joyce.
It is a sigh-inducing, common pattern: when two employees have a scandalising affair, whether or not any professional misconduct is involved, the woman almost never continues in her job.
The man, usually the more powerful or “important” employee, often does.
It’s hard to imagine Campion going back to any political staffer’s job following her maternity leave.
It’s equally difficult to imagine her returning to journalism at the The Daily Telegraph, which has pursued her with such vigour and published her image across its front page.
This week the Tele published a 2016 photograph of Campion in a short skirt, with Joyce, sitting next to her, apparently ogling her legs.
It was a shocking image, and one which managed to dehumanise Campion as the subject of Joyce’s (seemingly) lascivious gaze, while inviting everyone else to join in. What was she doing wearing such a short skirt to work anyway, right?
Coverage of Campion this week has included bountiful references to her physical appearance.
While some have attested to her skills as a media adviser, those skills didn’t make her indispensable to the National Party. But Joyce? Well, they can’t do without him.
And what of Natalie Joyce? She gave up paid work to be a full-time mother and wife, supporting her husband’s career, only to be abandoned (so it’s been reported) when it had reached its zenith.
She no longer receives a taxpayer-funded spousal allowance.
No doubt Joyce is worth his $416,000 a year salary – politicians work very hard. They endure long hours and arduous travel.
But you know what would be even harder?
Raising four children without much gap in their ages while living in rural and remote locations, virtually as a single mother (by Joyce’s own admission).
The toughest thing about that gig would be its unrelenting nature, its lack of recognition, its absence of taxpayer-funded staff.
For Mrs Joyce, there was no Qantas Club lounge to unwind in at the end of the gruelling day. There was barely anyone to make her a cup of tea.
Even News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt, not known for his feminist leanings, thundered this week about “the women left behind after helping their husbands build their lives and careers”.
“They perform those thousands of trivial tasks,” Bolt wrote, “from the washing and the cooking to paying bills – that keep their family life ticking smoothly, but which will never make them famous and never feature on any CV”.
Why does it matter if these women have jobs? Particularly when they have the joy and comfort of babies instead?
Because without careers, they are at the mercy of the consequences of the choices of the men who financially support them.
And sometimes those choices are abysmal.
No one would say that women shouldn’t stay home to look after their children, if that is their choice. But we cannot pretend the risk involved is shared equally between the sexes.
For my money, that is the most depressing aspect of what is already a thoroughly dismal story.
Twitter: @JacquelineMaley
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I agree with the article, up to beyond the “you live with the choices you make” comment.
Thank you for going to the tiresome effort of typing out an entire article for the befit of folk like me. That is a good friend.
Elisabeth’s “Wayland” comment made sense and believe what is suggested can be incredibly hard work, stuff of life, a little after the theme of
“The Kings Speech” movie on tv last night and occasionally intensely rewarding from the standpoint of restored self esteem.
I think Marilyn echoes that.
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She didn’t type it out, she cut and paste like normal people always do.
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Still nice of her to put it up.
What a grouch you are some times..
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From BJ’s maiden speech:
I always think it interesting to go back to these maiden speeches, they’re declarations and a pole star to measure drift and navigational loss. Reading his speech I get the feeling that BJ was also providing a warning and signifying his self-recognized shortcomings which under present day circumstances have been brought to light in regard to his behavior as well as the truth of his own reservations concerning his measure of his courage/cowardice when faced with the lure of power.
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F2005-08-16%2F0078%22
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them ‘hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that is in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a man my son.”
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Hello allthumbs.
It’s been a while since the Old Man gone.
And here you are.
Doug too?
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Greetings, old friend. Have you been on sabbatical?
Here, the more things change the more they stay the same.
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G’day Fed, I miss Ellis more than I thought possible and Jennifer offers some solace in her going after this disastrous Govt with a certain vigor and sense of purpose.
Lord knows what tremendous fun Bob would have had over the last couple of years, probably four books, a play, a revue, a film script and any number of columns on TableTalk with a cast of characters biblical in scale and scope.
I am an occasional blow in on Sheep to vent spleen, but live in hope of Barnabyian Prime Ministership and light candles for the soul of the old man.
How go the boxes?
Best Regards
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Morning allthumbs and Doug,
Wonderful to hear from you both.
Excuse my late reply.
Doug, sabbatical? No. I’m out. I have very little to say and have found no place in which to say it. Ellis’ Table has no analogue.
Allthumbs, you’re absolutely right, he would have loved it. And yes, a million words would have poured from his pen and it would have been a delight to read every single one of them.
But here we are…
The boxes are confounding me still. But you should see them allthumbs – beautiful, crisp edge rectangles of plywood.
Kinda like this,
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ0FEilG2zrcjoAAHthi-hgFzRXGpkYY9YBx_zNSVswVrA2VdJFJAvQTiio
Best be off before the morning gets away.
Lovely to see both of you again.
Cheers,
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Hi Nick
Are you still into minimalist boxes?
Here’s one for my enemies:
“One should forgive one’s enemies, but not before they are hanged . . .”
(Heinrich Heine)
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Fedallah, long time no speak!
I persisted, for a while, with the wish to continue the conversations, but as you correctly averred, it wasn’t to be.
Everything changes, as the Buddha taught and Nina Simone sang, and in that respect I’m as evident an example as ever, about to become divorced again, 10 yrs this time cf 15 the first, the last twelve months in weekly sessions with a therapist re. finally dealing with the consequences of early childhood abuse, about to decamp Sin City to take up residence on a forest monastery… it couldn’t get more radical than that in terms of discrete change.
Funny how little things predicate the larger… in China once, in the middle of a remote countryside, high in the mountains and far from the beaten tracks, I met a Daoist monk; he’d retreated from everyday life, family, career etc, in his late fifties and now lived this life of retreat. I was impressed at the time, ‘way to go’, I thought.
And now I’m taking the very same leap…
Best, Grant
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Ah women . . .
“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?'”
(Sigmund Freud)
We men often have but slender knowledge of ourselves, and even less of women.
I think the defect in the analysis is to be found in the attempt to generalise. We are all individuals (Monty Python’s “I’m not!” notwithstanding) and each of us has our own wants desires and motivations.
There is overlap, and common ground, but not uniformity.
Grant, all the best with your lifetime search.
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+
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Doug & allthumbs both, thank you for the kind thoughts. We were privileged, all of us, to have travelled those extraordinary years of exchange enabled by our ringmaster, that spinner of the finest tales in the land.
And indeed, a leap into the unknown, not that that in itself is unknown in our behaviour; not obligatory, not a leap into novitiate monkhood but more a step into a caretaker’s role on a large patch of renmant rainforest and grass, bush regen, haircutting grass, reafforestation, other activities as required, in return a dwelling and the company of a monk.
Best to you both.
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Hi allthumbs, per my comment to Mr Quixote elsewhere on these pages, such a pleasant surprise to find familiar names here.
re. your post, you didn’t mention it, I assume you’re aware though, that BJ quoted Kipling’s poem If, per your reproduction above. Without being too hard on Barnaby, his choice of verse doesn’t really demonstrate much initiative over & above pot-boiler recitation of Kipling’s well-worn trope.
Trust you’re well, & still kicking in the traces.
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It figures that Kipling would appeal to Baaaarnaby. One imagines that Proust, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein would fly past well above the Akubra.
🙂
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Canguro, great to see that moniker of yours, I envy your impending vow of silence but would miss your sagacity in a voice I imagine to be measured and deep.
I cannot listen to Nina without thinking of you.
All the best, all the very best.
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Oooohhh yyyeeeesssss… !!!!!
But no blame on the woman who falls for it. Just very clear information to young woman who might be vulnerable.
Don’t fall into the “I figured it out. You should too” basket.
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Thinking this is a two-fer. Aside from sanctimonious bullshit coming from journalists acting as if it’s the AFFAIR we’re obsessed about and not the two jobs created for Campion and her stress leave and her supposed redundancy package – has this been verified? it’s that the Liberal Party is getting rid of Joyce because he supported Turnbull.
This is about strategy.
Kroger and Abbott were in Wantirna over the week-end. Sukkar nowhere to be seen.
Methinks journalism is not only failing us but actually fucking us over.
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And all the nights at he motel paid for by the taxpayers. I resent having to pay for his bonking and I don’t find her much better. She knew he was married, but like him, it was only ever about self.
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Even if Shorten wins let’s watch what Murdoch unleashes. Clearing the decks?
Was wondering why Murdoch was going so hard on Joyce. Yep you have desperation on two fronts – which makes me wonder not only how shit journalism is in this country because, well Gillard, made me question everything, getting rid of Turnbull and Joyce one term of Shorten?
Does anyone play chess? Apparently, Murdoch does, with our FUCKING LIVES. HOMELESSNESS escalating but shhh shit journalism is now almost a parody. I saw this during Gillard and I’m seeing it again.
This is about the survival of the Liberal Party. Joyce and that ‘secret agreement’ that Turnbull didn’t have the guts to stand up to cos well one seat majority.
Stop focusing on the noise and realise what’s really going on.
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I realise that people don’t understand mental illness. But that intellectually I can see shit but emotionally I’m a mess. And I realised even if Centrelink continues to bully, what I contribute matters, even in a small way. I have been bullied in various ways cos well, in certain contexts, white privilege it’s a thing.
I’m in hell, and I’m going to keep walking. Because if I can’t think, even if emotionally I’m fucked, this is not a democracy.
When Centrelink can invade your privacy in this way and and I’m not as bad as I was last year because I was suicidal last year because of the mind games, people should be made aware how Centrelink invades your privacy and they’re not mental health experts.
I HAVE to think. But when my emotions catch up it’s like … Uluru Statement, so much work and dialogue and mainstream media making our First Peoples our history as a country invisible … and I’m not even Indigenous and if you’re non Indigenous and you don’t *get* betrayal … I want an Eddie Mabo day cos fuck man, without this guy just wanting his home, fuck mainstream journalism how you betray us daily the lies we grow up with that Terra Nullius so Centrelink, I say this to you FUCK YOU.
And to Malley – just shit journalism really because look is who is on the board on Fairfax. Costello as Chairman of 9, Stokes, his agenda on 7, Channel ten, when do the new owners take over?
Murdoch wants both Turnbull and Joyce to go that’s what I’m getting. And demonising Shorten in the time he does get is what is going to happen.
Everyone – chess.
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Jennifer, address the escalating lack of journalism on stories that matter. Inequality, homelessness. Where are those stories?
People are committing suicide because they have no housing. Women and men and children are selling themselves in order to get housing.
Why not address THAT?
Consecutive governments have acted against the most vulnerable in our societies so forgive me if I’m kinda over how Murdoch still owns this country.
Journalism used to be about exposing injustice.
White Male Privilege still governs but the widening gap and if it’s bad for ‘normal’ society what is it like for Indigenous peoples?
Also, how about you have someone do an explainer on what ‘racism’ is? Cos I think Molan doesn’t understand the concept of bigotry.
What I find kinda hilarious, is politicians doing that whole sleep out thing when they’re the legistlators.
So instead of this left/right binary how about we do this shit about making this country safe again?
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One for Joondalup:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/23/abc-faces-more-questions-as-emma-albericis-disputed-article-is-restored
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Where are the stories about the vulnerable the homeless? Is it that Murdoch has skewed the narrative into yeah but? landscape cos what is journalism really failing us in?
People are killing themselves, Jennifer. I’m lucky to have housing.
Journalism is failing us. This isn’t a democracy. We don’t have transparency, we don’t have separation of powers and don’t get me started on executive powers.
I happen to be intelligent enough to know how Centrelink is invading my privacy. I only have my mobile to get access to mygov and calls from family. Last year was one of the worst years because I see bullshit so clearly.
The reality is the press gallery let us down again. How is this a fucking democracy when you can sense the bullshit but you can’t quite pinpoint it and then Murdoch allegedly decides with its verocity that secret agreement between the Nats and the Libs, nah, fuck this shit cos Turnbull is a weak …
If only we knew in this thar democracy that Turnbull spouts what that secret agreement is about?
Journalism is failing us across the board because who owns what.
For me, it was telling that Kroger was with Abbott in Wantirna over the week end. Without Sukkar.
So my thoughts – clearing the decks – one term of Shorten, unleashing all the scandals of pretty much every one in his party and then business as usual.
Meanwhile, suicide, housing, that gosh darn new crueler Social Welfare system because how dare you be poor and mentally ill?
I am shit at chess but even I smell bullshit. Shorten, you’ll be PM for one term because Murdoch.
Hey, Jennifer, do a piece on suicides in this country as a result of how Centrelink invades privacy.
Just think all that money wasted on monitoring one person could house how many people?
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apologies for ranting under your blog. I can’t access twitter …for some reason.
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You have spoken truth to power.
No. Of course they don’t want attention drawn to the dark side of what they do, so they confect
beat ups. Often the beat ups are slyly worded pieces intended to distract from the real issues.
The attempted discrediting of Alberici and a flood of divisive “its only ever men’s fault” demographics massage masquerading as identity politics- form v substance- mythologies as Baudrillard and
Barthes might say, is classic culture wars.
The truths Alberici and others hint at pertaining to the theft of $65 billion for tax cuts for the rich garnered through repressive social infrastructure cuts must always face discrediting when the truth leaks out.
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Not sure but then I am, why Turnbull’s requesting Alberici remove an article decrying the bullshit of company tax cuts when highlighting companies who haven’t paid tax, HASN’T MADE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
THIS ISN’T A DEMOCRACY.
China’s soft power influence in Australia decried as xenophobia yet nothing of India’s.
When journalism happens in this country that actually makes mainstream media ie channels 7, 9, and 10 aside from screaming IT’S WORLD WAR THREE IT’S WORLD WAR THREE … can you let me know?
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Thank you paul. I didn’t think I would get through last year. I don’t cope well with mind games. Also people invading my privacy without my consent. November 2017 – I survived another year fuckers!
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Hey out of curiosity, why has no one on the supposed Left questioned why the Uluru Statement hasn’t made mainstream news?
You lot doing your outrage and you’re not asking the truth?
Rudd – words
Shorten- words
Turnbull – words
Rudd made that fucking apology yet still imposed Howard’s intervention.
You lot with your outrage but you really don’t stand for anything do you?
This country’s history is a lie. I endured Howard his black armband bullshit.
You just don’t do substance. Because a country’s history, if it is made invisible, complicit.
Massacres, rapes – you with your white privilege, you’re so fucking complicit.
I don’t want to be liked. I want truth. I want a truthful taught national history. Recognise is bullshit as is reconcilliation. Look at the word ‘reconcile’ then get back to me.
You all are complicit. You’re supposed to be activists but you’re failing us in a wanting a taught history when migrants come to this country and have no fucking idea about our history because it’s not taught.
John Oliver thinks his idea of “Australian” is what matters to the global world.
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The Uluru Statement is quite absurd, an exercise in overreach. Those people self-identifying as Indigenous comprise less than 3.4% of the Australian population.
Numbers count in a democracy, and no way will a separate parliament claiming to speak “on all issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders” ever be acceptable to the other 96.6% of Australians.
On the other hand we are all Australians and our parliamentary system is about as good as it gets, in international terms.
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I don’t feel comfortable with the use of percentages to relegate the worth of the democratic contribution by the Originals given we killed most of their antecedents. I mean. Fair’s fair.
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They’d all be dead by now anyway. Like all my ancestors.
Who’s to say what is fair?
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Well yes. I also speculate that his partner might not last as his “partner” for the requisite 2 years that would entitle her to a claim, (as a de facto) on his assets. If so the life of an unemployed single mum beckons. Perhaps she’ll start a blog.
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also, JW I have absolutely hung on your every tweet throughout. Stellar work. Thank you.
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She will have to live in a tatty high rise council flat drowning in emphysema sputum from career drinkers, ice addicts, trollops and profligates.
Therefore, she will have to be subject to wilfully inaccurate and brutal extortion from Centrelink, be ignored or spend whole months on a non answering half disconnected call centre line privatised by the government to reward spiv wannabees at Liberal Party MP’s offices for monotonous lickspittling rubber stamping of neolib “policy”.
She will have to buy her underwear from Cheap as Chips, eat potato crisps or Twisties for main meals and- worst of all- send the kid to a state school after it has been molested at an inadequately funded and managed child care centre while she wastes her life looking for non extant jobs.
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The two year ‘rule’ doesn’t apply if there is a child born out of the relationship; which now seems very likely.
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Yes, doug quixote. A child of sin, conceived in the outer darkness of carnal iniquity…:abandon hope, all ye who enter,
Joyce, alas, the New Prometheus, tied to the rock, rendered immobile by his apron and beer gut, as the financial vulturous creations of his own demonic incontinence pick at his liver and worse still the remnants of his numbered accounts anew each day henceforth.
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Yes, indeed. He’s just the man to pontificate upon family values; like Malcolm Turnbull the born again Puritan so certain now that it couldn’t happen to him, safely into his sixties and nothing to fuck-over except our desire for good government.
Throw them out, the Looters and Nutters, until they’ve spent forty years howling in the wilderness.
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Like the Nationals, it’s complicated. I would expect BJ would crush her like a bug in any family court contest. I don’t think he will buy an annulment, so yunno, no “horse and carriage” and being Barnaby’s Bastard at the private school of choice will be character building.
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What becomes of being up to your neck in female arms and legs. Or lost in a blokey world
I do not think the little Vikki will be fobbed off without a fight, it will go on for years if wiser counsel does not prevail.
For these adventures, “marry in haste, repent at leisure” is somewhat pregnant with meaning.
He has to start again, get away from whatever it is that poisons him at the moment, maybe try to make his new relationship and a new life work…leave his ego behind him in Canberra.
If my guess is right, Vikki needs to take a really long hard look at herself also.
it is spectacular stuff but underlyingly ultimately tragic, perhaps in multiples, if certain people don’t get real with themselves and others.
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Long-suffering Mrs Baaaarnaby will most likely divorce the Baaaastard.
A marriage to his new darling would see all washed clean and the new Joyce Family appear in Woman’s Weekly – Baaaarnaby reinstated to parliamentary ministerial bliss and the wee bairn Baaaarnaby junior booked in to St Ignatius, to be followed by Baaaabara and Baaaartholomew, not to mention Baaaardolph.
See?
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Ewe.
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And if I may crave your indulgence a moment longer, had anyone else noticed that other alleged serial creep, Trump, when greeting students survivors of the Florida shooting, has the habit of shaking the hand of young men, but, with young women, he also grabs their elbow, and sometimes pulls the young women in. It’s looks so, so wrong.
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He can’t tell the difference between her pussy and her elbow.
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Either way he grabs.
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grubs
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I was just thinking on Michaelia Cash after watching Maley’s spineless assessment of Cash that would have shamed a jellyfish on tonight’s Drum.
No doubt about it, Dr Wilson has a developing nose for bullshit.
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This emphasises the Wilson point:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/michaelia-cash-slut-shames-young-women-workplace-bully-must-go-now,11254
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I should add that Maley seemed quite serious in her comments re Cash’s slut shaming on the Drum.
https://www.trendsmap.com/twitter/tweet/968788556721213440
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It is serious. This person was the Minister for Women, and is now Minister for Jobs. She must go.
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doug, have a look at the AIM network conversation and tell us what you make of the article and comments.
https://theaimn.com/day-day-politics-getting-bill-shorten-begun/#comment-611757
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Yes, the conservatives want to “Get Shorten”. But I think Cash is just a Young Liberal grown older, and prone to bombastic outbursts sometimes mistaken for debate.
Her reputation over many years is that she is someone you’d rather not work for if you had a choice. The better ones jump ship and the rest get the blame for her stuff-ups.
Not fit for office; as I’ve said elsewhere, if she wasn’t a woman she’d be on the backbench permanently.
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I’d have her on a Centrelink dole queue. But that is where I’d have most of her collaborators also.
And a fair chunk of the electorate, judging by what has gone down in Tassie, the custard-gutted sheep, If I didn’t have them euthenised first.
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Custard-gutted sheep? 🙂
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Well, what would YOU call them?
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Easy, Paul, easy! I like the phrase.
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Now for some thing completely different:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/02/chris-uhlmann-accused-of-egregious-breach-by-revealing-michaelia-cash-phone-text
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And today in the Daily Tele Barnaby Joyce is quoted as saying the paternity is “a grey area”. Whilst it’s tempting to assume he’s discussing laundry, I feel confident that once the bairn arrives and we see the chubby red faced, hairless, fractious, incoherent but clearly self focused little man, it will not be in doubt. Oh wait.
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And, on a different topic, it is actually a thing to slut shame whilst being cunt struck? Asking for a friend.
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Destabilsing, being thunderstruck…to do with being overwhelmed by desire, especially for an individuated,actually repressed Mitty type like Barnaby.
I thought Cash had reached the limits of ludicracy but Joyce takes the cake. He has cracked from the drinking and the pressure combined with a problem with intimacy-the old WASP disease to the extent that he knows no what he says.
He will cringe some day, if he is lucky, but I think he is deep into a crack up from which recovery will be fraught and contingent.
It is hard not to wince at the lack of gallantry, caddishness if you like, unless there is irrefutable proof that Campion is a trollop, although some could suggest sleeping with Barnaby is suggestive circumstantial.
The relationship with Campion must be over and if Joyce is wrong, he has sacrificed his best chance for freedom, that could have come of a relationship with Campion.
We are not flies on a wall, it would be intriguing to know what has being going on behind closed doors at Fernando’s Hideaway in recent days and weeks.
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