Barnaby Joyce, grasping the nettle, celebrating the cliche, and keeping the gerbil alive ...

(Above: continuing our week long celebration of the gerbil is First Dog. More of the first water First Dog here).

This being gerbil week, we were pleased as punch to see Chris Deal maintaining the rage with To err is Deveny, to be a hypocrite Devine.

It's always admirable the way a man can turn a couple of gerbils into a screaming cat fight worthy of a heavyweight championship.

But I'm afraid the gerbil affair blind-sided me, and I almost Barners very fruity piece 'Til debt do tear us apart.

Here at the pond, as almost kissing cousins from the old Tamworth days, we have a special fondness for Barnaby Joyce, and he never fails to disappoint.

This time he's in full panic, "the Greeks are in Australia and making us go bankrupt" mode, and when not shouting out in blind irrational hysteria "for the love of the lord, won't someone think of the wonderful miners", he's warning us all we must do the hard yards, take the ball up the middle, ruck like a banshee, and in desperate times, perhaps put a finger up the bum in best professional footballer style.

But it's not just the positions taken in the latest position paper that makes Barners stand out from the pack, act like a breakaway in the ruck. He does so love his rugger ...

It's the language. After kneeling to thank the miners for saving us from the jaws of recession, Barners looks under the bed and finds the floor teeming with Reds. Brooding about the unfair tax he scribbles:

This is something that would be more appropriate for Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales or Castro in Cuba. Australia hasn’t experienced this sort of insanity since the failed approach by the Labor party when they decided to nationalise the banking industry in 1949.

Ah yes, the Commonwealth bank. What an insanity that was.

And at that moment, contemplating the insanity of it all, especially the agrarian socialism beloved of rural communities, the Barners' floodgates collapse and a torrent of words flow out of the failing dam.

The actions of the Government of late have been "quiet bizarre". It's pandemonium. The Government has gone rogue and lost the plot. No way we should say "hip hip hooray". Not when things go snap, and we're not talking about the old card game played with intense concentration by kids in Tamworth for generations, we're talking about elastic. Going snap. In a sinister way.

Speaking of children, why do you suddenly think of politicians? Barnaby knows:

Then they are going to tell us that at sometime in the future, when they cannot be pinned down, it will all get better, like the child who is going to clean up their room in three years’ time.

Hah as if any child ever cleans up their room, in three years time, or in never never time. Just like pollies leaving stuff at the bottom of their bird cage.

No, what is needed is hard work, and grit, perhaps some shell grit for the chooks, and hard work and pain and sacrifice:

If there is one thing that Australians can do for themselves, it is not to get into excessive debt. There are no tricks in how you pay it off – it is just very hard work and lots of sacrifices and pain, where pain never needed to happen.

Pain that never needed to happen. Which is curious since the last big pain, the actual recession in question, happened when Costello and Howard were holding the reins. But never mind, we get the drift.

Debt is bad, as any Lyndon Larouche true believer will tell you. Which is why I put my credit cards in a plastic bag at the back of the freezer.

Or did I take an insanity pill? Perhaps that was it:

It’s always the same – the pain of paying it off is five times the joy of getting it and when you look at what the Labor Party has got us, they’ve really got us nothing, except for getting us into a lot of trouble. The resource profit tax looks like the last pill of insanity after a huge night on the town.

Oh Barnaby, you know me ever so well. A huge night on the town. A total rage. But now for the downer, the bust, the headache, the dizziness. Now I'm terrified. Down to my last insanity pill, and no way to rack up credit.

Should I stay on a cash only regime? Count the pennies and hope I end up with threepence, or perhaps sixpence? Dare I even dream of a shilling or a florin? I know a guinea is beyond me forever, but talk to me of money:

This budget will determine that either the Labor Party are going to start turning around the debt or it is going to confirm our worst fears about them. I clearly spelled these out at my National Press Club speech where I stated that the Labor Party has no respect for money, no capacity to handle money, and no knowledge of money.

Oh those damned socialists with their contempt for money. Why am I reminded of Margaret Thatcher?

It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

Hang on Maggie, that's not sounding the right note. Let's start again:

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well.

Much better Maggie. An encore for Barners?

Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.

Well played. Now the killer diller:

The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of someone else's money.

Oh dear Maggie, that's torn it. You see that implies that the socialists have a very good idea of money, have a great deal of respect for money - even if belongs to miners digging up Australia - and have a capacity for taking said money, and worst of all, with their knowledge of money, they know how to handle it! By sticking it in general revenue and going on an election vote-buying bender. A huge day at the polls!

You've crystallised Barners' very worst fears. How can the coalition buy votes if the other buggers have all that moola?

All these fears have crystallised in their inability to grasp the nettle and immediately start turning around the debt – not in two or three years’ time, but now.

We must grasp the nettle. Embrace the cliche. Or else sich in die Nesseln setzen! Ah yes, poke a stick around Tamworth and you'll find German and Irish genes in abundance.

And yet, while a good time was had by all by reading Barners, I still remain fearful.

Will Tony heed Barners call not to offer up new taxes? Will he promise a pilgrim's progress of awesome austerity of a kind the British experienced after the second world war? Will it all be grift and grind and hardship? A cocky's cage of grunt?

Or can we grasp that particular political nettle a little later? Take it on notice? See how the bidding wars develop?

So far we've only had one definitive offer, for parental leave, with Chairman Rudd deferring any great big tax he had on the agenda for the ETS, preferring instead to tax smokers and miners. Coffin nails and earth pillagers.

How to reconcile Barners love of miners with their desire to dig up the Liverpool plains?

Questions, questions. Please put the questions on notice and be grateful for the word pictures worthy of Hieronymus Bosch's vision of hell ...

And now, as usual, and to celebrate the emancipation of gerbils, and in keeping with our extended bout of adolescence, a song comes along to celebrate the ongoing outing of gerbils in the media.

Apologies to any wombles out there, but surely this is the solution to all Barners' fears. A return to the gold standard and recycling:

Underground, overground, gerbiling free
The Gerbils Of Wimbledon Common are we
Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the Everyday Folks leave behind

Uncle Bulgaria
He can remember the days when he wasn't behind The Times
With his Map Of The World
Pick up the papers and take 'em to Tobermory

Gerbils are organised, Work As A Team
Gerbils tre tidy and gerbils are clean
Underground, overground, gerbiling free
The gerbils of Wimbledon Common are we

People don't notice us, they never see
Under their noses a gerbil may be
We gerbil by night and we gerbil by day
Looking for litter to trundle away

We're so incredibly utterly devious
Making the most of everything
Even bottles and tins
Pick up the pieces and make 'em into something new
Is what we do

Underground, overground, gerbiling free
The gerbils Of Wimbledon Common are we
Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind

(Below: and now libertarians, anxious to maintain the rage - since we also have called this Senator Conroy week - go for it).