Comrades and Mad Rooters,
Up until now, I have purposely refrained from making any public comment on the private life of the Hon. Leader of the National Party, Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce, MHR.
But I simply can't go past the Bonking Ban as it is absolutely bloody brilliant, isn't it?
What a masterstroke of knee-jerk running-dog Govt.
A unilateral ministerial no-exceptions ban.
For a Minister of the Crown, in and out and all about with anyone in the office is finished.
Male or female, it's done.
It's over.
There will be no more a rootin' and no more a tootin'.
None.
Voila!
That's it.
Problem solved.
Ahhh...what happens if Canberra is actually one gigantic office?
No, no, no.
Shagging each other senseless is out the window...gone...and it will, must, most definitely stop - immediately.
No, no, no more "bits" or "pieces" "on the side".
No more going around setting up sneaky little '"love nests".
Has no one ever heard of the word mistress until now?
Good, because it is never to be heard again, under the new Ministerial Code of Conduct.
Somehow it smacks of locking the gate after the horse has bolted, never mind that ordinary back-benches can continue to get themselves fully involved in the fuck-fest without fear of public sanction.
It's not terribly surprising, of course, that Mr Trundle called Mr Joyce a "low bum" who was more or less involved in "a shocking misjudgement, a world of woe, and general appallingness".
I love that word - 'appalling'
Of course the Prime Minister finds it all "appalling".
It's political poison; Mr Trundle can hear his own death rattle here, because he knows he can never rule without a coalition partner - however "appalling" their leader may be.
And, after being lectured with a public reading of the Riot Act, the Deputy Prime Minister only compounds his "appalling" persona by seeing everyone and everything, except himself, as "inept".
The Country Party rump has been exposed as weak and gutless - no news there, everyone knew that all along anyway - but more importantly, both Malcolm and Barnaby have shown their hands as the hypocritical bastard individuals that they are.
Hoist, by their own petard.
Being the low-grade, scumbag, unscrupulous journalist well known for his morals that I am, I've never been perturbed by the concept of "getting a bit", as long as it's done in the right and proper fashion following all the rules and customs - let alone the complexity of human frailty - but the screaming-naked bald-faced hypocrisy of it all is what shits me to tears.
Who doesn't despise elected officials doing one thing and saying another?
And you don't need me to tell you about the Country Party's misogyny, staunch upholding of 'traditional family values', and their reactionary denial of and outright opposition to gender equality, viz a viz trying to sabotage the gay marriage 'postal survey'.
The list goes on.
In my more than 30 years as a working journo, banging around in commercial radio and TV newsrooms, I had a fair bit to do with the Canberra Press Gallery.
Back in the day when "off-the-record" still meant something there was only very rarely any problem with the NatCap lifestyle.
Pollies of every stripe, journo's, press secretaries, spin doctors, lobbyists, influence peddlars, ordinary staffers, political departmental people, the typing pool, number's men, the honest toilers and public servants, hangers-on, handsomely paid loafers and masters of the dark arts in general all knew there was very little chance of being caught out as long as you conducted yourself according to protocol, because the cone of silence had been well and truly lowered and screwed down tight.
What happens in Canberra stays in Canberra.
"This is not 'Nam! There are rules!" This is politics.
With the Great Unwashed kept in the dark, there was endless hanky-panky going on; it was one of the Canberra radio bureau's who coined the popular, but rather brutal phrase "who's up who, and for what?" while making polite enquiries about people's personal arrangements.
It was the sole concern of a vast Parliamentary gossip machine that had its network of tentacles squirming their way into every festering nook and cranny, but none of it, not a single word, was for publication, even if it was outrageously blatant common knowledge and the worst kept secret in the National Capital.
Of course not.
It was/is one of the best protection rackets going.
Someone was always "getting their broccoli cooked" which was code for two or more people in, around, beside and behind the Press Gallery fucking each other like Duracell rabbits.
In another era, the whole sordid business could have continued on unabated, unreported, even if Joycey hadn't made the fundamental error of "getting the mistress up the duff", [more a case of being very neglectful rather than anything else, I hear the Country Party cry], but now, in a #metoo world, having a "love child" at 50 is more than likely to be fatal for the Govt. with a big swathe of the electorate thinking the hypocrisy is beyond the pale.
Keep up - women have got the vote now too, you know.
All sorts of people have got the vote and they'll make up their own minds.
And now former reporters who've seen it all are telling me that we should be pissed off, because us filthy journo's - who have always been up to our own grotty grubby groins in it ourselves - are now being asked to pass judgement, and decide what gets published and what doesn't.
Talk about shifting the goalposts.
Clearly, that's an untenable position to be in.
Doesn't anyone read the gossip columns anymore?
To mix some metaphors, once Pandora's Box has been opened, and the genie is out of the bottle, where do you draw a line in the sand?
Or do we go along the Fleet Street route and just do away with the sandbox altogether?
I used to have a News Director who all through the long-running Bill "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Clinton tawdriness, would delight in doing a fabulous impression of the Pope saying in a long, slow Gregorian chant "head...jobs...are...O...K..."
As far as he was concerned, as long as the "tunnel of love" wasn't involved, there was no story. Full stop.
And as he pointed out, it was only a man who happened to be in the Oval Office who "had a mole on his back and an extremely small penis", after all.
It goes without saying that wherever power, influence and money is involved - never mind the rorting and corruption - there will always be sex, drugs and rock'n'roll bubbling along somewhere there just beneath the surface.
In the highly charged constantly changing 24-hour full-on atmosphere of a sitting week, everyone knows that 'after hours' drinking and bonking go hand-in-hand into that good night, raging and rooting is rampant, and everyone, and I mean everyone, is backing the horse called "Self Interest".
But not anymore.
Oh no siree.
It's over.
In the books under "Bonking Ban".
Dead, buried, and cremated by Prime Ministerial edict.
My arse it is.
It was nice knowing you Malcolm, and even nicer knowing that you'll go down in the little Canberra history books as the Great and Glorious Banner of the Bonk.
A drover's dog could lead Labor to easy victory if an election was held this weekend without the Pinko's even having to say or do anything, with the wreckage of the Coalition now in flaming ruins.
And they have no-one to blame except themselves.
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