the triumphant return of the fully roasted tomato

Comrades.

Is it really three years since Barnaby Joyce's wife of 25 years threw all his suits onto the front lawn of the family property in Tamworth and drove over them not once, but several times, with a ride-on mower/slasher? That's class. If memory serves, he does have an allegedly alcoholic daughter who will take any inappropriate moment to bad mouth the cad and bounder, and bag the shit out of the no-good low-down brown dog of a philandering father. They are good conservative people up there New England way, you know.

You can read all the salacious deets about him rooting the office secretary in the gossip mags, if you must, and having more babies with her is right there in the New Idea history books, if you care to dust them off. But despite (or perhaps because of) that look and that unique bulbous face of his and the way it connects to his neck, there is no getting away from the fact that Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce skulks around in the velvet curtains and does unspeakable things in the shadows and cannot ever be trusted on/with anything, whatsoever. Never. Full Stop. He'd be up to his own arse in horse shit and swear black and blue that everything was above board. J.Depp - despite his faults - pretty much read the room and got him one on that bloated conker with the "inbred with a tomato" wisecrack. And, oh, how we all laughed. Except it's not funny. Joyce is a rat, he knows it, and he enjoys many similarities with the despised rodent without so much as even a hint of shame.

Poor ol' McCormack was never more than a hard-right Country Party apparatchik, happy enough to live in ScoMo's shadow, but he ended up speaking gibberish in the Parliament which had Hansard puzzled when the galley proofs got back to the office. Fair enough, it was a bit much to ask of Mangler Mike to keep the seat warm for Scotty from the Tourism Board while the main man was enjoying a touch of northern hemisphere spring weather, not to mention a jolly good dinner and piss-up at No.10 where our Great & Glorious Leader and the Lord High Chief Bozo came up with the truly bizarre Penguins for Tim Tams project. Sending coals to Newcastle has got nothing on the free trade deal to end all free trade deals. Marmite anyone? Anyone? Three years of loyal service to a lost cause is cast aside just like that  - in a game McCormack described as "brutal arithmetic". No loss of face for him. Just give the baton back to the bumbling buffoon, and move on.

If that's what the political outhouse that's been forever propping up the Tories does for leaders, then God help them all. It took the late great Tim Fischer to tell them that the days of the squattocracy were over, he was the last of the last, but the Country Party has never really been the same since Doug "Hayseed" Anthony, who could get very bolshie about rural landholder's rights despite being further to the right than Genghis Khan. He was all for agrarian socialism - but only if it went as far as farm bail outs and Govt. drought assistance for marginal lands. The Tomato's peculiar approach to everything, including women, is best seen on the Campaign Trail, where you'd expect him to get a good work out in the coming 12 months or so. He's a big believer in retail politics, and couldn't care less that the first image of him kissing a recoiling baby is likely to provoke responses like "eeeewwww". All publicity is good publicity. Tomato Tommy is a bit like Tony Windsor in that regard - promise everything to everyone on the hustings until you get their vote - then do what every pollie does: back the horse called Self Interest. Just sooth the backward electorate with the fabulous news that animal dung and 'farming activities' will not be included in the non-existent net-zero carbonoosquies by 2050 'target', so there is absolutely nothing to worry about there; no more to pay. And as well all know, everything else is small beer...

Labor's best chance in the bush is to follow the Country Party lead - few policies and plenty of well targeted scare campaigns. The ALP will never win west of the Divide, it's QLD they have to fret over - it's the key to winning as any psephologist will tell you, as Queenslanders always want to poke their noses in the Miracle of Democracy and make a nuisance of themselves. Never mind that Albo is unelectable (that face, that voice), they'll take him to the next poll, where he could surprise everyone by doing an Uncle Bill Shorten in exact reverse. But first, they have to put the Rural Rump back in the sugar bag.