If you go to Barnaby Joyce’s webpage, you’ll see that he advertises himself as a father of four, who therefore understands the difficulties of Australian families, believes in the sanctity of life (of the unborn variety) and claims, startlingly, that foetuses ‘feel the sensation of love’. Based on that last claim alone, one would be forgiven for thinking that Joyce has extraordinary empathetic abilities allowing him to be at one with the inner emotional lives of babies.
You’ll also see a link to a press release referring to Senator Hanson-Young, whose two-year-old daughter Kora was expelled from the House during a surprise division to the mutual distress of mother and daughter. That release states “yesterday’s events smell of a stunt designed to garner maximum media exposure for a Senator who up until these events has done little else to contribute to the national interest…Perhaps Senator Hanson Young thinks we should just roll out a blanket and put the toys in the middle”.
Sure. It’s Hanson-Young who’s using the media to raise her profile. Let’s break down what Joyce is claiming.
Kora Hanson-Young wailed in distress as she was taken from her mother. Senator Hanson-Young was visibly distressed at not being able to comfort her. To characterise that as a stunt is to accuse Hanson-Young of something a bit more serious than just playing the media.
Joyce is claiming that Hanson-Young deliberately engineered a situation where her little girl was taken into a large room full of loud strangers, one of whom then shouted at her*, and where she was then taken away in tears without her mother being able to follow her or to comfort her. Just before, by the way, a weekend where mother and daughter would be separated.
And remember, if Kora hadn’t been upset, there would have been no story. So for this to be a ‘stunt’, Senator Hanson-Young would have had to know that Kora would be reduced to tears. Joyce is claiming that Hanson-Young put her daughter into a scary situation that made her cry, on purpose, as a media stunt. To raise her own profile.
That’s an accusation that goes well beyond partisan jibing.
*With all due respect to the President, who presumably didn’t set out to frighten anyone, his tone of voice would be pretty terrifying to a toddler.
