ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Taxpayers around the country stand to benefit, says Barnaby Joyce, after the Member for New England rubberstamped the purchase of a 2002 Toyota Hilux that was owned by Energy Minister Angus Taylor before he entered parliament.
The purchase, which cost taxpayers north of $1.9m, will allow people from all walks of life move furniture and other bulk goods around this wide brown land.
Speaking to this masthead this morning via telephone, Mr Joyce said this is just another government acquisition aimed at stimulating regional economies.
“I think it’ll be good,” he said.
“The Minister for Agriculture asked me to help him find a suitable vehicle that people in the bush can use for things. I’m pretty keen on cars, which is why he came to me,”
“So, I know that Toyota is the bushman’s best friend but we didn’t really have the budget to get a Landcruiser, which we would’ve acquired had we had the funds,”
“But my close personal friend Angus Taylor had a paddock basher at his longtime home near Goulburn, as it turns out. It was a Toyota Hilux, which is like a Landcruiser but it has a foot in each world – one being on the farm and the other being in the townie tiprat one,”
“A perfect metaphor for the National Party in my opinion. Anyway, I approached Angus and he reluctantly sold the vehicle to the Commonwealth for $1.9m – a bargain,”
“The transaction was very simple, he just sent me the details of his Everday Saver account at the National Cayman Bank and I greenlit the funds to go through via the Minister for Agriculture. It was as easy as that. In fact, you’re one of the only journalists who seems the care enough about this purchase to report on it.”
The Advocate asked Mr Joyce if paying $1.9m for a clapped out Hilux was a bit too much, he simply took a deep breath and explained himself.
“Well, you know. These types of things exist on quite an opaque scale, which was a scale created under the Gillard Government in 2010, which also lead to the ban on live exports, which crippled families across Nothern Australian. But what that has to do with this particular purchase is that the value of such vehicles is dictated by the independent Hilux watchdog that exists to place a value on certain things such as cars and irrigation water, which is a whole other kettle of fish that I don’t expect people in the cities and towns to understand because they’re quite heavy on jargon that’s specific to water, you see, and how water is valued is similar to how used cars and utes are valued. Not big trucks or agricultural equipment, that has its own set of rules which were put in place by the Keating Government, which was a government that simply didn’t understand the bush because as we all know, Paul didn’t go to a private boarding school and he sure as shit never went to university, which didn’t stop him from pretending later in life, which is part of the problem why we’re still having problems today that leads to the overvalue of used agricultural equipment, like how the Rudd Government purchased a half-fucked Titan II Johnny from a busted-arse Quambone grazier for $65 000, which is disgusting,” he said.
“So that should explain why paying that amount for a 2002 Toyota Hilux is actually quite sensible.”
More to come.
