Tuesday 15 August 2017

The Australian government is currently engaged in paroxysms of both righteous indignation and despair. Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce's father was born in New Zealand. Oh, the humanity. Joyce is being called upon to resign. Seems New Zealand has an obscure 1948 law stating that one is a citizen "by descent" if a parent was a citizen. Because a change to the Trans-Tasman Agreement (which created very close ties between the two countries) is in the works the NZ PM had someone perform research that brought this to light. Dual citizenship is not allowed for Oz politcos. Shame and opprobrium descended upon the unwitting minister, the agreement is imperiled, the Oz government may fall. Cool. As an aside, Barnaby was roundly condemned in 2015 after Johnny Depp knowingly brought his dogs illegally into Australia, which currently has no rabies, by suggesting the actor "bugger off back to the United States". One mustn't apply normal rules to major celebs.

In the echo chamber of twenty-four hour news and power accreting politics there are, apparently, nit-picking nitwits who actually care about this sort of thing. On the positive side, this is wonderfully entertaining and, after all, magnifying inconsequential twaddle (along with temporizing) is much easier than dealing with real concerns. Since these people typically handle authentic public problems, which are often the artifacts of similar politicians from the past, by making them worse, we should all indeed rejoice and enjoy the show. By the way, how many of you out there relish having venal morons exercise increasing control over substantial aspects of your lives? Oh!? Huh. Wonder how they got elected then?

Jack