CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As the Nationals side of the Coalition government shoehorns Barnaby Joyce into the role of Acting Prime Minister, it is not yet known who the ousted Michael McCormack will blame for his demise as Deputy Prime Minister.
There are 21 people in the National Party room. 16 members in the lower house, and five senators. During today’s spill Barnaby Joyce secured at least 11 votes, but it is not clear who those votes came from.
Some MPs say it was ‘close’ – but close doesn’t mean shit if you are the last major party in Australia that can still roll a leader without asking the rank in file members to vote on it.
Either way, not one MP or senator who voted today represents an urban or metropolitan region – in one of the rare examples of rural Australia deciding what is best for them.
This means Michael McCormack is struggling to blame his downfall on the raving inner-city lunatics that he points the finger at every time he gets backed into a corner.
During the 2019 bushfires, he was quick to slam the climate change concerns of “inner-city raving lunatics” at a time when 10% of the nation was on fire.
Late last year, he blamed Melbourne’s Black Lives Matters protestors for the disastrous second wave in Victoria that forced his government to keep the JobKeeper payments coming – even though any link to protestors and that particular outbreak has been disproven time and time again.
Earlier this month he fired another shot at the inner-city when he said that coal produces the coffee inner-city types sit around and drink and talk about the death of coal.
Last week, it was perhaps his longest bow yet when he made up false culture war mongering allegations that inner-city activists were getting in the way of his party attempting to tackle the NSW mouse plague, and said they should be diverted to cities to scratch the children of animal rights activists at night.
It’s believed McCormack is currently scheming how to blame people in the big smoke for the latest and greatest hurdle he’s faced.
More to come.
