Barnaby Joyce, Stern Hu, communist China, and deeply philosophical blather

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(Above: Mao Tse-tung, the last emperor or a jolly good timepiece for a two dollar store?)

Australia's most tedious conversation continues apace in The Punch, Rupert Murdoch's contribution to the blogotubes, already crammed full to overflowing.

But it does produce its wondrous surprises, most notably Barnaby Joyce getting deeply philosophical in The real price of economic prosperity might be freedom.

The trouble is, you couldn't call Barnaby a literary stylist. His words are alternately inclined to the agrarian and the pompous and the incomprensible.

It might be convenient to live in the opulence of the short term pecuniary benefit that can be attained by turning a blind eye, but what is the legacy that you leave to your progenitors?

Progenitors? I thought that meant a direct ancestor, an originator of a line of descent, a precursor, a founder.

Was Barnaby saying something like it might be okay in the short term to turn a blind eye and take the cash in the paw, but what' s the legacy for the kids?

Who knows, but his column is full of this kind of turgid prose. I guess since the National Party has turned into champions of the coal mining industry, which is busy shipping Australia overseas as quickly as it can, he'd know all about turning a blind eye and taking the cash in the paw.

But enough with the guilt already. Barnaby has bigger fish to fry. He broods over the fall of the Sumerians, and the Greeks and the Romans and the golden age of the Qin dynasty in China, and now he looks with dark foreboding at America:

Right now, we might be correct in seeing the signs of the collapse of Pax Americana. I dearly hope not because of the values prevalent in that society which, although not perfect, have been substantial in advancing and protecting the liberties of the individual across the globe more so than anything that ever preceded it. Whilst acknowledging this advancement we must also take into account the platform of the British parliamentary system.

Whilst acknowledging this advancement? By golly Barnaby, it's a good thing my English teacher isn't around, because he'd be rapping you over the knuckles with a ruler for that kind of pretentious over-elaboration. Along with democracy, didn't we learn that a hearty simplicity is the hallmark of Anglo Saxon discourse?

Never mind, back to the collapse of America, and the disasters which would follow, including no doubt our righteous and immediate withholding of the shipment of all raw materials to China:

The one thing we are certain of is nature abhors a vacuum. This emerging vacuum, which would be caused by the demise of America, will mirror nature in that it will be replaced by the most proximate and prominent power, being the Communist Peoples Republic of China.

Well yes I'm absolutely sure that nature abhors a vacuum. Which explains why there's so much space dust out there in space. What's that you tell me? Outer space is inclined to be a vacuum? Ah well, I guess the universe isn't natural or else abhors a cliche. But what's this about China being communist, I hadn't heard anything about that?

The reason I say communist is that they are a communist government. 

Lordy, well there's the insight for the day. And I'd though Mao Tse-tung was just another in a long line of emperors.

The people who are encompassed by their boundaries have never had the benefit of the democratic process of election and the communist government is not a government that represents the wishes of the public mandate and the aspirations of the individual. Communism is circumscribed by the control of the centralist state and its accompanying dictate.

Accompanying dictate? The wishes of the public mandate? Oh dear, report to the English teacher after school for some remedial lessons.

But okay I gather you don't like the Chinese government, and who amongst us would disagree with the notion that they're naughty, even though revered leader Stephen Conroy thinks we should follow them down the path of censoring the intertubes. (And it occurs to me that on occasions you too Barnaby have spoken of the virtues of banning things, in what was a very Chinese way. Et tu Barnaby?)

But I guess there's a point to all this musing, and it would have to be a political point, seeing as how you're a politician:

The detention of Australian citizen Stern Hu is exceptional to our expectations in Australia because the ethos, so central to our democracy, has led us to a naïve belief, that our judicial principle, tilted towards the right of the individual to live in a quiet enjoyment in their own expression of thoughts, movements and pursuit of their own personal aspirations, is universal.

Yep, it's the Stern Hu matter again, but Barnaby can you please borrow some words from the French or the Americans when it comes to talking about liberty and freedom. They take it in a more nuanced, serious and evocative way than deploying "quiet enjoyment", as if somehow liberty was related to a tenancy agreement. 

But back to the musings:

We think that the democratic principle is the birth right of every human being. Communist China is one regime, amongst many, which should display to us that the vast majority on this planet do not live in a version of democracy, or any form of rights and liberties, that bears any real resemblance to our expectations here in Australia.

The question we must ask in Australia is, should our belief of the right of the individual be something that is of such calibre that it should be promoted to all, or is it something that should be withheld for enjoyment by a selected few.

Like the Liberal party and big business? I keed, I keed. Of course we all love the right to vote once every four years to allow the bastards to run us over for the rest of the time. So long as we can ship our wheat and coal to China and make a crust.

Alternatively do we allow the sponsorship of the diminution of the ethos that protects the right of the individual because the price is right?

What's that? Steady Barnaby, I don't like where this is heading.

Do we allow the ownership of our nations resources such as coal, uranium, iron ore, the rare earth in the ground, the actual ground and its agricultural capacity, to be transferred to the sovereign ownership of another nation which displays a totalitarian principle in how it deals with its own and how it deals with others. The transfer of process from their nation if carried out in our nation would be the destruction of all that we hold dear.

Well okay we keep control of the shell company, but we can still keep shipping the raw materials to China, can't we? I mean, if we can't keep riding this resources boom, we'd be totally stuffed. I mean, there's principles and then there's principled folly. 

You do understand, don't you Barnaby, that asserting ownership of minerals in the ground doesn't amount to a hill of beans and shipped them off. Once they're gone, they're gone, and to a fiendishly communist country at that.

Do we develop a convenient commercial blindness because the price is right? If we do, can we sit in judgement of others in history, especially those in the last century, who did precisely the same thing because it was commercially viable to not look too deeply into who you are dealing with?

Oh no, Barnaby, say it ain't so. You mean, we have to impose a total trade ban on China to free Stern Hu? And right now? To save our souls and preserve our integrity? By golly, John Howard didn't bother with that when that other chappie sat in a Chinese jail for six years.

The human aspiration has battled for sixty or so thousand years in its endeavour to deliver the highest level of freedom to the individual and to grant that freedom as a right to the next generation. Is it now logical to sponsor this disintegration back to a centralist despotism?

Now I begin to understand where Barnaby is heading. Better to live in abject poverty on our feet than to sink to our knees and enjoy the benefits of two dollar stores selling us cheap Chinese goods in exchange for our integrity, our humanity and our soul. And our iron ore and coal and wheat (we can always sell the uranium to other dictatorships).

But hold fast to a railing now. The sea is stormy, the waves white capped, and things are going to get a little rough.

No philosophy that is associated with a political movement can promulgate its beliefs without a primary resource to underpin it. The primary resource which is the source of its wealth. If you do not hold that primary resource you must secure its source by what ever means are available.

Yes! We are putting a black ban - or should that be a coal ban - on China. That'll learn 'em. Power comes out of coal kept under ground. Barnaby is working up to a way to save those Liverpool plains farmers from having the ground dug out from beneath their feet.

No one listens to you from the pulpit of poverty or in the subjugation of the pews. This is neither an argument about race, colour, nor religion.

WTF? Now I'm lost again. It's bad to be a preacher talking from a poverty stricken pulpit, so we do have to dig out the coal and ship it off, or not? As for the subjugation of the pews, I feel a Pauline Hanson moment coming on. Please explain. 

Who subjugated the pews? Or are the pews subjugating us? Should we be mounting a campaign to free the pews? Or will the pews free us? Do we have to become atheists? Is that what you're saying, so we won't be subjugated in the pews to those filthy, deviant Christian preachers?

It is certainly a challenge as to what our belief structure is and to when we believe it might be convenient to put it aside.

Every day Stern Hu, a man with Australian citizenship, remains detained without charge or fair judicial process, is a day that exemplifies in greater clarity what is precious in Australia and should be promoted, not just for us, but for all.

Every day we make excuses, we belittle our core philosophical belief in the right of the individual.

Right, now I get it. I trust the combined forces are preparing for an armed invasion of China forthwith, if not by tomorrow, then certainly by the end of week. And once we've whupped their arses - I see it as a special forces job - we might just go on to take over the world, and give them a taste of dinky di Aussie freedom, oi oi.

Every day we use expediency as an excuse for why we cannot more effectively ventilate our belief in the rights of the individual, which are so evidently curtailed for one of our own citizens; we say quite clearly that the values of those protections of the individual appurtenant to the citizenship of our nation, are conditional, not explicit.

Oh no, ventilate our belief? Isn't that what Clint Eastwood used to do, y'know punk are you feeling lucky, or should I just ventilate you and make you holey. And where the heck did you get appurtenant from? A half baked crib for trainee lawyers wanting to blather about incidental rights and privileges in relation to principal property for purposes such as passage of title, conveyance or inheritance?

The condition is that the individual’s right has a price that is not determined by guilt or innocence, but is determined by commercial expediency.

Or perhaps even the thought that a nation of 22 million might have a hard time making an effective iron fist point at a northern neighbor with well over the billion floating around inside their turbulent domain.

This corruption of our philosophical belief diminishes us all and takes our nation, which is still at a formative stage, to a lesser article than it could be and a dimmer beacon than it should be.

Oh no, the lights went out all over Europe, and now the beacons are dimming all over Australia. But does a country which allows a politician to so mangle the English language deserve any freedoms or rights at all?

When all he needed to say was pick up the phone Ruddster and talk to the Beijing overlords, and thereby save the world from righteous blather garbled into a preposterous jibber jabber not even Dickens at his satirical best could exceed.

My last thought? Get an assistant who can write in English, or if you employed one, sack him or her and get a new one. Better still, hire a ghost writer, and if you employed one, sack him or her and get a new ghost who can ventilate your appurtenances ...

(Below: Barnaby taking the ball up the middle, doing the hard yards, and honing his English skills as he yells 'get out of my way ya pack of bastards').