Barking!

Wagging the dog’s breakfast in politics*

*Yes, it’s messy.

Dog Gate

This week, Australian political news has been all agog with that seriously weird gift that just keeps on giving, so much so that it has now acquired the epithet “Dog Gate”. No, readers, I am not talking about some opening in a fence or door through which one may admit one’s canine. I am talking about the incident during Barnaby Joyce’s interview on Monday 20 July last with Sarah Ferguson on ABC Current Affairs program 7.30 (formerly The 7.30 Report), named for the evening timeslot in which it goes to air. Joyce, showing even more than his usual facial rubicundity, twice interrupted the interview to yell “Sit down!” aggressively at a dog none of us could hear on air. The incident subsequently went viral—and yes, of course it is now on YouTube. In a week in which, among other things, the triennial Australian Labor Party national conference is taking place, the Orange MAGAT is taking another tilt or three at Iranian windmills, sending the price of oil up to US$100 a barrel, and Pauline H is taking her own tilts at women’s rights by claiming women are responsible for violence against them and that child support payments and domestic violence leave are “scams” or “cash cows”, the news has been dominated by said canine aperture. If not dominated, then it at least took up a preponderant amount of space, in true waggydog style.

For info: said doggie is a staffy-border collie cross and her name is Stella (for star!...and now I have a grotesque scenario in my head where Joyce’s wife Vikki Campion incarnates Vivien Leigh’s Blanche to Joyce’s Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, and poor wee Stella incarnates poor wee Stella, played by Kim Hunter in the 1951 Elia Kazan adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ celebrated play A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche, on arrival at Stella’s house, greets her sister with “Stella for star!” As to whether Vikki is as delusional as Blanche….read on.)

Outrage upon outrage followed Joyce’s outburst at his pooch, featuring the following theories:

1. There was no dog (we couldn’t hear it—although Sarah Ferguson later commented that she could faintly hear the dog barking in the background on the recording). Dog or not, the shouting was an invention, a sort of miniature wag-the-dog distraction at the moment Joyce was asked the question about his “defection” from the National Party to One Nation in the context of Pauline Hanson’s recent hobnobbing with the extreme of the extreme in the UK: “You are defending your leader, but are you really comfortable with where she is taking you?”

2. It was animal cruelty—something I first thought on hearing the aggression. There is certainly a time for Top Dog behaviour to discipline one’s canine but Barnaby’s response was seriously OTT, given how far away the dog was—apparently out in the yard of the farm and some 50 metres away—and almost inaudible on air. Victorian Legislative Council (state upper house) MP Georgie Purcell of the Animal Justice Party pounced (as it were) on the issue and Barnaby volleyed back with a deprecating comment about the “regional-city divide” in Australia, the implication being that the city chardonnay set understand sweet FA about rural life.

3. It was an ABC plot. This is the weirdest reaction by far, and where our Vikki/Blanche takes centre stage. In her own blog on this platform (yes, Substack hosts everything from the weird to the wonderful, which is arguably part of its charm), it has been reported that Vikki Campion, in a post of over 1300 words, took Sarah Ferguson and the ABC to task for “crucifying” her poor StanleyMarlonBarnaby, accusing Ferguson of claiming there was no dog (Ferguson didn’t, but stated that she found the social-media claims amusing). Campion affirmed that 7.30 would subsequently be “banned” from their home. (I have searched for the blog post in question but could not find it: it is possible that Campion took it down following reactions, which may or may not have included advice from hubby.)

Joyce’s appearance on the program was ostensibly to clean up the dog’s breakfast of his fearless leader’s forays into the mystic during her UK trip (with apologies to Van Morrison [1970]). Well, that worked well did it not. Hanson herself, apart from her offensive comments following her return to Oz on domestic violence and child support payments (at a time when femicide is on the rise and AU$1.9 billion in child support payments remain unpaid, mostly owed by men), has decided that One Nation should cash in on Dog Gate. The party has produced a new item of merch: “Sitdown! Barnaby’s dog leads”, on sale on the PHON website for $15. Yes, really. Not a joke (although these days, one wonders). Much as I hate to publicise PHON, this one is worth a look, hence the hotlink. The blurb accompanying the merch ad includes the following pithy phrases:

Sometimes you just have to say it loud and clear: sit down. Barnaby said it on live television and Stella (a farm dog with near perfect manners) took it in her stride. The clip made its way around the world overnight, giving people everywhere a laugh. We figured a dog owner with that kind of conviction deserved a lead to match.

New One Nation campaign poster

Faraging in the Face of Bin

Also in today’s rubric of silliness-gone-viral, we can find an unfortunate incident in Clacton, site of the even more unfortunate by-election about to take place there. Yesterday, a woman shouted “Wanker!” at Farage as she drove past him on a local street. Distracted by that action, the woman in question then rear-ended a BMW that was stopped at a traffic light. Farage found that amusing and posted a video of the incident on X with the comment “That’s what you call instant karma”. David Crowe of the The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported this with the comment “John Lennon would no doubt wince at his song title being used by a politician who is reviled by progressive Britain for leading the country out of the European Union, declaring the country to be broken, warning against asylum seekers and vowing to slash migration”. Indeed.

Farage’s post did, however, reach 5 million people and Farage’s Reform Party is, according to a YouGov poll published on 21 July, slightly ahead of the two mainstream parties and well ahead of the two minor parties with 23% of voting intentions. This is a similar percentage to PHON but PHON is competing against only two other parties, with ALP clearly ahead and PHON has, following Hanson’s disastrous UK tour, now dropped back to third position, behind the LNP, according to a 20 July Roy Morgan poll. Moreover, the preferential system in Australia weights potential outcomes differently from the first-past-the-post system in the UK.

Crowe’s SMH article further commented that Farage was savvier than Hanson in two key ways. First, he “has a better grasp of the political spectrum”, explicitly distancing himself from the extreme fringes represented by the likes of Tommy Robinson, with whom Hanson hung out during her UK visit. Second, according to Crowe, Farage is “a far more capable advocate than Hanson”, being a good public speaker and using humour to good effect. That may be, but Hanson’s down-home plain-speaking fish-and-chip-shop-lady persona (complete with awful whiny voice) has its own attraction in the Australian context.

Hanson is also capitalising on the debate around gender identitarianism in Australia, which lags woefully behind the UK (or at least its Supreme Court) in intelligently balancing rights. Australia continues to enable the trampling of women’s sex-based rights and the so-called “gender-affirming” medicine practised on minors from which an increasing number of other countries, notably in Europe, are now retreating. I remain gobsmacked by the numbers of women who now think that Hanson will protect our rights. Hopefully her pronouncements on violence against women and child support will serve as a wakeup call to anyone who thinks that Hanson ever has been or ever will be women’s ally. (A few jolts to the dug-in genderists in the ALP might help and all.)

But I was talking about Farage and the unfortunate by-election in Clacton, which Farage forced upon the British populace (and government coffers—the by-election could cost some £275,000) because of “an independent inquiry into donations he received from dubious sources” (Crowe again). He quit his seat of—yes, you got it—Clacton, and is running again for the same seat. If he wins, he could repeat this process indefinitely to avoid the probe into his party’s finances. The by-election, due to take place on 13 August, has attracted some 34 candidates (apparently the highest number ever to stand in a by-election—this BBC report contains the full list), including some twenty independents and a number of joke candidates, of whom three are with the Monster Raving Loony Party. None of the major Westminster parties, apart from Reform (Farage’s party) are running candidates. In short, the whole by-election is being treated as a joke.

Hot favourite at the moment is no doubt the looniest of the loony candidates, one Count Binface (the political persona of comedian Jonathan Harvey), who appears with a garbage bin on his head and refuses to speak as any other than this Binface persona: an “intergalactic space warrior” (see this report on ABC’s Media Watch). When asked by the BBC’s Today program what his appeal to the British voters was, Count Binface responded “I’m not Nigel Farage” (massive appeal indeed), and hinted at exposing Farage’s “cunning stunt”—adding that he had to take care in pronouncing that so early in the morning. (FYI a feminist theatre group from the late 1970s also bore the name Cunning Stunts, inviting, of course, the same Spoonerist inversion as that hinted at by Binface).

Yes, he even has a manifesto (published in 2022)

Count Binface, like Barnaby Joyce and Stella (for star), has made international news: in times so bleak (when were they not), one does need a little jollity. Farage’s little stunt, however, raises more serious questions about the manipulation of the electoral system in the UK, and invites speculation on how that dilemma could be resolved. As concerns the political donations prompting the scrutiny of Farage, one might well ask the same question re perfectly legal huge donations in Australia. Even if the federal government did move last year to prompt greater transparency in declaring donations and lowered annual caps on them, it failed to close an important loophole: a single donor can donate just under the declaration threshhold to every major branch of a political party, both state and federal, thus multiplying by nine the undeclared amounts. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation benefits in particular from the support of Pauline’s new bestie, Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, without worrying its ruddy little head about inquiries into the financial power behind PHON’s perch.

Epilogue: dog’s breakfasting in style

A couple of days ago, this little gem appeared in The Guardian: “Barking mad: why would someone spend £28,000 on a home spa for their dog?” I have no idea whether Dog Gate had a bearing on the article’s timing, but the piece delves into the development of “barkitecture”, with people investing in spa baths, pheromone dispensers, luxury leather sofas and so on for their wee doggies. The term barkitecture is not new, but according to the article, its meaning has now expanded to encompass “redesigning your house beyond all recognition in order to pamper your pet”. Cats don’t miss out either: have you considered a custom-made under-stairs cupboard with built-in feeding station? (I have an under-stairs cupboard: do you think I could save on the expense by bunging a catfood dish in there?)

We know that pampering pooches (coddling kitties, babying birdies, featherbedding ferrets) is a lucrative industry that speaks to humans’ desire for display (and status-rivalry, and craving for company) much more than to animals’ needs. In Australia, the pet business is worth between AU$21 billion and AU$33 billion (depending on which website you consult), which admittedly includes all items from feeding to grooming to boarding to veterinary care, as well as extravagant extras, but still… And yes, there are of course a number of Australian businesses called “Barking mad”, from pet grooming and training to a television production company specialising in documentaries (which I do not believe focus exclusively on dogs).

Clearly, those delusional individuals that are investing in spas and feeders and plush sofas and whathaveyou for their Tricki-Woos* need to take a leaf out of our Barnaby’s book: “Siddown and shuddup”. You can even now buy a special Sitdown! lead to keep your at-risk-of-spoiling canine in check—or buy two and get a $10 discount on the pair. Hurry, while stocks last! (Well, actually, you have to wait for the stock to be there first: not available until August. Readers, try to contain your disappointment.)

*Tricki-Woo is of course the name of Mrs Pumphrey’s pampered Pekinese in the popular book and TV series All Creatures Great and Small. The photo below is of the late great Diana Rigg in her last appearance with Tricki-Woo before Rigg’s death in 2020. This was the second of two TV adaptations of ACGaS, the first being in 1978. The second series gave more prominent roles to women and greater complexity and depth to all characters, including that of Mrs Pumphrey.