November 24, 2005 | Graham

Barnaby, talk to Vaughan and Mal



Barnaby Joyce is threatening to veto John Howard’s IR legislation because of pressure from his state National Party colleagues. The Courier Mail quotes National Party State Leader Lawrence Springborg saying “The Nationals remain unconvinced that the legislation, in its current form, should be supported.” Opposition is apparently broadspread – “The concerns raised by MPs were not geographically constrained, but came collectively from MPs representing the Nationals’ southeast and urban electorates as well as . . . regional, rural and remote electorates.”
But yesterday morning at a Conservative Club Breakfast National Party frontbencher Vaughan Johnson was impassioned in his support for AWAs and the changes. He told the story of a young constituent who he helped to get a $70,000 entry level mining job in his electorate who now earns $180,000 p.a. because of an AWA – a higher wage than a parliamentarian, and probably with more security.
His yarn was supported by another from guest speaker, Assistant Treasurer Mal Brough, who reported that close friend of the Prime Minister, Senator Bill Heffernan, was not comfortable with the new legislation because it meant that the shearers on his NSW grazing property would be able to demand a substantial raise.
Sounds like John Howard should be inviting Vaughan, Mal and Barnaby round to Kirribilly House when he returns from overseas to wrap up the vote he needs to pass his legislation.
I’m going to send Vaughan Johnson an email to see whether he’ll reprise his sales job on this blog.



Posted by Graham at 12:49 pm | Comments (5) |
Filed under: Australian Politics

5 Comments

  1. Sounds like anecdotal evidence and a statistical outlier

    Comment by Vee — November 25, 2005 @ 10:20 am

  2. “Big-Noise” Barnaby is just that – all p*s and wind. Eventually this noisy mynor (minor) will cave in to howard especially when he is offered Chairs of Committees, perhaps even the Deputy Speaker’s job. All that extra fame and money eh!
    So don’t hold your breaths on Barnaby doing the right thing by the average battling Australian – after all he is a national party member.You know that’s the mob who appeared to many to have bought votes through the ‘Heritage Fund’ (what a laugh, but I believe them all honest, decent, honourable, politicians) last election. numbat

    Comment by bppttrsn7@bigpond.com — November 28, 2005 @ 3:35 pm

  3. It is a very pity that vital national problems have somewhere in third millennium still been tackled on merits of a few clans’ personal interests rather than considerations of a common future sustainability at national scale.

    Comment by Michael Kerjman — November 29, 2005 @ 11:38 am

  4. About time the Nats differentiated themselves from the Libs though and actually stood up for their constituents, the ones they were elected to represent. Thank god for Kennedy, Windsor and Andren, pity is that we need them in the Senate at the moment, not the House

    Comment by Vee — November 30, 2005 @ 10:53 am

  5. Surely, it does.

    Comment by Michael Kerjman — November 30, 2005 @ 11:14 am

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