Well, that didn’t take long. After one, glorious, carp-less month in Australian Federal Parliament, Barnaby Joyce is once again the deputy Prime Minister of the nation.
Joyce was officially sworn in as the 2IC of the comically dysfunctional novelty restaurant that is the Turnbull Government as he officially returned to Canberra today, spent November in the wilderness after the High Court booted him from Parliament over the dual citizenship fiasco.
Joyce, as we all know, was ruled ineligible on account of being an actual Kiwi, forcing him to vacate his seat of New England and depart Parliament.
What ensued was possibly the most pointless by-election in Australian political history. Despite Joyce’s litany of weird-ass missteps, murderous intent displayed towards celebrity dogs, and beat-red scone, Joyce managed to not only hold his seat, but increase his margin of victory. A primary vote of 64% is way up from the previous primary mark of 52.3% he scored at the last general federal election.
And thus, Barnaby By-God Joyce strolled back into parliament today, and was sworn in as Turnbull’s second in command; the man who, should Malcolm Turnbull be absent or incapacitated, will lead the country.
Thus, we put to bed the first part of this intensely weird and overly long-running saga of a bunch of publicly elected morons willingly choosing to not know where they come from.
‘Course it’s not over. Not by a long shot. Joyce’s first order of business for what’s technically now his second term as Deputy PM was to furiously attack the Labor Party after the red team finally started feeling the pinch of Section 44 themselves.
Politics. It’s good, actually.
