Barnaby Joyce, the nice uncle who providentially keeps on giving while rejecting protestations in a car park ... ...

Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history
Of breaking little hearts, like the one in me
That's O.K., lets see how you do it
Put up your dukes, let's get down to it!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!

You come on with your come-ons, you don't fight fair
That's O.K., see if I care!
Knock me down, it's all in vain
I'll get right back on my feet again!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!

Or put it another way:

Well what can I say about the first parliamentary week as shadow finance minister?

Tony wanted a speech and I delivered it at the Press Club. It would not have mattered if the speech had categorically disproved the theory of relativity, the issue would be the slip and when the question came where I had to, on my feet and in my head, quickly add up Labor party expenditure via MYEFO for the next four years, I said billion when I should have said trillion.

In that split second my head said trillion my heart said you have got to be joking that is enormous. My head was right but the result is for all to see on YouTube.

Put it another way:

Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

Put it yet another way:

Now I sit back on the weekend and see it reported that I am a “bearded lady”, a “freak show”, “dead set dud”, a ticking bomb and part of some new Bjelke-Petersen plot.

Not a bad result after one week. Slightly premature in the judgement made, but that is politics and I will take it on the chin.

Yep, let's take it on the chin:

Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history
Of breaking little hearts, like the one in me
Before I put another notch in my lipstick case
You better make sure you put me in my place

Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Come On, Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!

But seriously folks, at first we thought it was only the Queensland government that was bust, news provided to the world by Barnaby Joyce not so long ago. But deep in our heart we always knew NSW was in trouble because of the wretched Labor government, and now it's official. It's going bust, just like Queensland:

In closing I would like to point to just one example of what happens when governments start running out of money because they have been profligate. In NSW the Dalwood Assessment Centre, Seaforth, and Palm Avenue School helped kids from the country with learning difficulties but this is being closed and sold off, basically a land grab for a government that is going bust. Years of providence and goodness is being closed because of the government’s bad financial management.

You see, bankrupt, insolvent, a failed state, rooned, as no doubt we'll all be rooned, before the year is out.

You know, doing a close textural reading of that remark makes me think that the author was the actual author, good old Barners, and not some party hack, or press flack, or spin merchant.

Note the "In closing":

Step 3 Give Them a Clue
The closing speech is the last thing the participants will hear. It needs to end with a bang, not a whimper. After you summarize key ideas you need to give a verbal clue that your speech is coming to an end. For example, you can say, "In closing" or "Before I leave today" or "Finally, I'd like to..." Audiences like knowing the end is near. (How to Write a Closing Speech).

Indeed, how we love to know the end is near, the word is nigh. And note the biblical use of providence and goodness:

prov·i·dence

Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin providentia, from provident-, providens
Date: 14th century
1 a often capitalized : divine guidance or care b capitalized : God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny
2 : the quality or state of being provident

Oh it's a fine and noble word, so let's use it a couple of times, and throw in a divine and perhaps a magical:

Their solution seems to be that divine providence will spare us at some magical point years away. No country ever had a big financial problem that did not start with a manageable one but Labor lacks the conviction to manage it.

Now how about a bizarre bit of alliteration to really nail the point:

All the protestation in car parks will not balance the books. We can not keep going overseas and borrowing money to balance up our stuff-up.

Because of course the end is nigh, and not just for the NSW government, and a centre and a school. It's armageddon, the apocalypse, perhaps even the rapture, and all will fall:

... because debt is out of control and if you want to see where it all ends up then cast your eye to Greece, Portugal, Spain, Iceland and the stresses that are on the US and England.

... The results are there for all to see, their gross federal debt is beyond 120 billion and racing up, deficits march off into the future, and if the worse happened and the sovereign debt risk overseas brought a double dip recession, where would the money come from this time?

Quick, Chicken Little, we're all doomed, run about with wings flapping. Yep, it's double dip recession time, let's talk down the world, so we can get elected to save it.

Um, but what if it actually is rooned, and Barnaby is in charge?

Never mind, we're not in trouble, we're saved, because everything is dinkie di straight:

'I talk to Tony all the time. And we have a very constructive relationship, and a very open relationship. Sounds like it. And not a sexual relationship … We're basically in the same team together, so we chat all the time.'' (here)

Tremendous relief. Barners and Tony aren't an item, they're just deeply, madly in love on a platonic level. Team players, and thank the lord, there's no "I" in Barnaby. Or even Joyce.

Oh well played Barners, well said, which is to say Barnaby, which is to say Barnaby Thomas Gerald Joyce, and he's contributing to Australia's best conversation with Freak show? At least Barnaby didn't blow the budget.

How much safer we'll feel when you're in control of finance. And perhaps you can save the world while you're at it. No dangerous black red-bellied snake of debt left under any rock, or hidden in some nook or cranny.

But sad to say we will have to wait at least until next week until Barners gets it together to disprove the theory of relativity.

Meantime, what a clever appointment by Tony Abbott, and surely there's already a few gems here for Crikey to add to its list of Barnabyisms when the larrikins clock back into the office on Monday (Abbott crosses the flaw defending Barnaby).

Meanwhile, as you'd expect, some of the protestors are still out in the car park, with Paul Daley just the latest in the line of conga dancers eager to do a bit of Barnaby bashing in Rudd reaps from a green Joyce, wherein there's the usual stuff about talkback-tested one-liners and hayseed philosophising.

But the nicest put down so far has come from Dennis Atkins, who caused all the trouble in the first place about the billions and the trillions:

If crazy brave West Australian Wilson Tuckey is the mad uncle who upsets Christmas lunch, Barnaby Joyce is the favourite uncle who gives the kids whatever they want without anything in return.

Some people see Joyce, who yesterday claimed the little light in the fridge is there to make sure the butter doesn't get scared, as the problem child of the Liberal-National Coalition but while he does have some childlike habits (such as talking about little lights in fridges) he's now got a fully grown up job as Tony Abbott's finance guy. (Butter be scared with Joyce on the case as Abbott's finance guy).

Atkins was making the point that for a guy who keeps on talking about how the roof - perhaps even the sky - is falling in because of debt, it seemed a little odd to be talking about a $3.2 billion dollar climate plan without explaining where the money might be coming from, especially as Barner's plan to kneecap the public service and cut foreign aid caused a bit of stomach burn and heart ache in the home office.

Joyce says that without the advice in this review on what will happen to revenue he can't say where savings will be found.

"Is there something in that report that they don't want you to know?" asks Joyce.

Indeed. Every day I sense that someone is out to get me, or to hide the truth from me, or conceal reality from the world. After all, a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on (thank you William S. Burroughs):

A Liberal colleague of Joyce revealed to this column recently that he called the Nationals "the Arab Street", and explained this by saying they were "fundamentalists, obsessed with conspiracy theories".

Indeed. Well never mind the slur on Arabs, when fundie Christians might do the job, it somehow seems to fit with the Queensland mind set.

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts. (thanks again junkie Bill).

What a splendid year for federal politics, with Barnaby on the job. How the nation has yearned for a new Pauline Hanson, how Australians have envied the Unites States for having Sarah Palin, how we mourned the loss of Joh, and Flo and her magic pumpkin scones, but now the lad from Danglemah has heard the call and stepped up to the crease.

Come on Barners, keep on hitting us with your best shot, and may the list of Barnabyisms grow exponentially. Never mind what those clever dick chardonnay sippers at Crikey say, fire away, and turn a dull year into a verbal fireworks display.

The few gentle readers of loon pond surely won't mind us spending time with one of the finest squawkers on the pond, treasuring the bon mots in a lip quivering, tongue smacking, taste buds bursting way.

And now, in closing, and thanks be to divine providence, time for a singalong: