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Barnaby Joyce

“My penis made me do it.”
– Barnaby Joyce, Hansard, April 1, 2023 

Barnaby Joyce is the Member for New England, and the former Leader of the National Party.

He’s perhaps best known for wearing big stupid hats, which most fashion experts agree match his public persona and his contribution to political debate.

Technically, Joyce has the honorific of ‘Honourable’ before his name, but no-one uses it, for obvious reasons. He earned the title by virtue of his past stints in various roles, including Deputy Prime Minister and, God help us, Acting Prime Minister. A fact not lost on former Senate colleague Penny Wong.

Sadly, Joyce lost his grip on power in the Nationals in 2018 after news broke that he tripped over at work and his penis fell into the vagina of one of his media advisers. “You get that on the big jobs,” Joyce reportedly told his wife and teenage daughters at the time.

Since then, Joyce – known affectionately throughout his electorate as a ‘child maintenance payments enthusiast’ – has earned the nickname ‘The BeetRooter’, in part for his strange purple-ish complexion (he genuinely looks like he’s only ever one inappropriate parliamentary guffaw away from a massive heart attack) but mostly because Australians are fond of nicknaming people the opposite of what they actually are… because if Barnaby Joyce really is what we’d all agree a ‘rooter’ looks like, then the future of humanity is even more perilous than Artificial Intelligence might suggest.

Barnaby’s listed hobbies include “sexual harassment, falling over in the street with or without the assistance of alcohol, and receiving an occasional This Is Not A Greeting Card! from New Matilda readers”.

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