Part One – Government By Group Chat
Australia had not intended to elect Barnaby Joyce prime minister.
Like many national catastrophes, it began as a joke that wandered too far unattended.
At first people said:
“Wouldn’t it be funny?”
Then:
“At least he says what he thinks.”
Then:
“The experts have ruined everything.”
Then suddenly the Governor-General was standing beside a visibly hungover Barnaby Joyce while a malfunctioning PA system repeatedly blasted Cold Chisel through Parliament House.
Historians would later identify this as: “the point where the adults lost the remote.”
The penguin sighed.
The humans had mistaken confidence for competence again.
Election Night at Dubbo RSL
The victory party itself quickly descended into what emergency services later described as “an aggressively Australian situation.”
Three supporters attempted to ride an inflatable emu through the buffet area.
Someone set off fireworks indoors.
A man wearing two Akubras and a “COAL KEEPS YA WARM” singlet cried tears of patriotic gravy into a tray of cocktail frankfurts.
Meanwhile Barnaby emerged onto stage holding:
- half a shiraz,
- a microphone sticky with Great Northern,
- and what appeared to be an upside-down policy document.
Behind him:
- Pauline Hanson glared suspiciously at a halal spring roll,
- Gina Rinehart smiled like a casino owner watching drunks discover the ATM,
- and Malcolm Roberts was attempting to connect his phone to the national broadcast feed.
This proved unfortunate. Because instead of the national anthem, millions of Australians were suddenly subjected to:
- a conspiracy podcast,
- a YouTube ad for colloidal silver,
- and a man screaming “THE WIND TURBINES KNOW WHAT YOU DID.”
The transmission lasted six minutes.
ASIO briefly considered intervention.
Unfortunately nobody could locate Malcolm because he had accidentally locked himself inside the audiovisual cupboard while trying to “access the deep state frequencies.”
The First Speech
Barnaby approached the microphone. The room quietened.
Somewhere in the distance:
“BUUUUURP.”
Barnaby nodded solemnly.
“Australians are sick of bein’ told what to do by experts.”
Thunderous applause.
“Scientists. Economists. Doctors. Public servants. Engineers. People with graphs.”
Wild cheering.
One mining executive briefly lost consciousness from excitement.
Barnaby continued:
“Under my government, ordinary Australians will once again have the freedom to believe absolutely any bloody thing they want.”
The crowd erupted.
The ASX fell 9% overnight.
Sky After Dark called the speech “economically refreshing.”
The Cabinet
The first cabinet announcement caused several senior public servants to begin stress-eating dry SAOs in dimly lit office kitchens.
Prime Minister
Barnaby Joyce
Responsibilities:
- national leadership,
- emergency diplomacy,
- and occasionally locating his own trousers.
Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for National Grievances
Pauline Hanson
Responsibilities included:
- immigration panic,
- cultural outrage,
- and investigations into “suspiciously woke vegetables.”
Her first press conference announced:
- an inquiry into oat milk,
- a senate review of bike lanes,
- and a taskforce examining whether Welcome to Country ceremonies were interfering with mobile reception.
No evidence was provided. None was requested.
Minister for Resources, Freedom & Common Sense
Gina Rinehart
Officially: “Special adviser.”
Unofficially: The entire economic policy.
Her recovery plan consisted of:
- Dig up more stuff.
- Sell more stuff.
- Blame environmentalists if anything catches fire.
Treasury economists were later discovered wandering Canberra muttering: “That’s not how inflation works…”
Minister for Research, Freedom & Things They Don’t Want You To Know
Malcolm Roberts
No department admitted employing him.
He simply appeared, like mould in a damp rental property.
Malcolm’s office contained:
- seventeen extension cords,
- three broken printers,
- a whiteboard connecting wind turbines to the fall of Rome,
- and a laminated chart titled: “THE GREAT SOY CONSPIRACY.”
The penguin observed: “The humans had finally achieved government by Facebook comment section.”
Malcolm’s First Crisis
On Day Three, Malcolm accidentally emailed all Australians a document titled: “URGENT QUESTIONS ABOUT CLOUDS”
The attachment included:
- screenshots from Facebook,
- a blurry photograph of a pigeon,
- and a graph with no labelled axes whatsoever.
Sky After Dark described it as “raising legitimate concerns.”
CSIRO staff immediately applied for stress leave.
The Common Sense Australia Bill
The government’s first legislation included:
Energy Reform
- Solar panels taxed for “using too much sunlight.”
- Coal reclassified as “traditional energy.”
- Wind farms required to stop spinning after 8pm to reduce “woke noise pollution.”
Transport Reform
Public transport funding cut because “Real Australians drive.”
Unfortunately, fuel shortages began approximately eleven minutes later.
Education Reform
Science classes replaced with “Healthy Skepticism Studies.”
Students were encouraged to:
- question evolution,
- distrust climate science,
- and “do their own research” using websites designed sometime around 2004.
International Diplomacy
Foreign leaders struggled.
New Zealand requested clarification after Barnaby described them as: “Tasmania with vowels.”
China issued a diplomatic statement expressing: “deep concern and moderate confusion.”
France simply sighed and lit another cigarette.
At one G7 summit Barnaby accidentally spent twenty minutes talking to a decorative fern while Malcolm Roberts attempted to hand NATO leaders a USB stick labelled: “THE TRUTH ABOUT BATTERIES.”
Security intervened shortly afterwards.
The fern declined comment.
The Media Ecosystem
The outrage machine adapted quickly. Every morning:
- breakfast television screamed about migrants,
- lunch radio screamed about bicycles,
- afternoon panels screamed about pronouns,
- and evening television screamed about screaming.
Meanwhile:
- rents soared,
- hospitals buckled,
- aged care collapsed further, and infrastructure crumbled quietly in the background like a stale Sao biscuit left in the rain.
But those stories generated poor engagement metrics. One producer reportedly asked: “Can the housing crisis somehow be blamed on bike lanes?”
The trolls arrived carrying the usual ingredients: Reheated spam, rotten eggs, and enough projection to power a small city.
Closing Passage
And still many humans cheered.
Because outrage is addictive.
Because simple answers feel comforting.
Because a man yelling confidently beside a barbecue can briefly sound more convincing than an exhausted scientist holding evidence.
The penguin had seen this before.
Civilisations rarely collapsed dramatically.
Usually they wandered slowly downhill while insisting everything was:
- strong,
- traditional,
- common sense,
- and “what ordinary Australians want.”
Then one day the supermarkets ran out of lettuce and somebody blamed renewable energy.
Somewhere deep inside Parliament House a microphone crackled.
Then:
“BUUUUUURP.”
Also by Lachlan:
We Asked Two AIs What’s Driving the Doomsday Clock: The Answer Was Human Power
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Looks about right – thanks!
Hmmm… Lachlan McKenzie might be on to something with this projection of future outcomes.
Premature? Hard to say. Is Austraya ready to become a nation of yobbos, governed by and for yobbos? Is it our natural destiny to descend and regress, to adopt a contraposition to what is normally accepted as civilised progress?
Time will tell. Barnyard could, of course, drop of his twig courtesy of a few too many sherbs with one or more of his vital organs saying ‘I give up, I’m out of here,’ the Red-headed Moll might suffer a similar fate, her distressed ticker saying ‘I’m over all this sh*t and stress that she subjects me to,’ and the puppeteer ginormous is similarly overdue for a massive health scare… stroke, heart attack, aneurysm, whatever… looming around that ever-present corner.
Whatever, que sera sera.
See the usual suspects Hanson, Joyce, Abbott, Downer, Rhinehart and NewsCorp led RW MSM and polls being used to create a performative political pantomime for ageing voters…..for insurgency or ‘pensioner populism’.
How easy is it when many older inter war silent generations voted for Nats &/or Libs, then became appalled with the infantile behaviour of Joyce and Abbott; now rinse and repeat when will regional and/or older boomers and remaining silent gens grow up?
Chunder, dunder, one Knucking Fation blunder and grab the plunder, this is a bit of a Pollock pillock parade of Hansonish nightmares. Even B Joyce would wake in fright near the redtopped roughnut in the morning after schoonering to oblivion. Hanson’s view of an Australia she might gain and control is a rectum surgeon’s nightmare of brainlessness. Ill-equipped for cerebral effort beyond batter, scaling, wrapping seafood in the Murdoch reject rag, she might take the coins, but Canberra has now offered the enticing illusion of endless wealth for BLUDGING and barely turning up 20% of the time in our Senate, her JOB. Bludger, Whiner, Liar. If you vote for the disease, you do not comprehend the way to cure.., and this nation needs political, social, economic cures NOW.
This article is just a fine representation of ”a Day in the life of New England” when the local now representative of the PHONeys holds constituent meetings in a local public bar. The pics are excellent!!
Even the NOtional$ have had enough of this millionaire guttersnipe and his parade of alcoholism, sexual harassment and misogyny ….. His move to the PHONeys was reported as being”encouraged” by a fresh lady Chairperson of the NOtional$ Tamworth Re-election Committee terminating his automatic pre-selection.
However, this is not the first attempt. The former misogynist committee running pre-selections thought that his pre-selection against the very popular INDEPENDENT Tony Windsor at the 2013 elections would terminate his career after seven (7) years as Senator for Queensland, after his progress into the HoR was blocked. However, the Windsor family quietly terminated Tony’s political career on health grounds, and Beetrooter ”did a Bradbury” to the great disadvantage of the gently floundering New England regional economy.
Yes, electorates get the representatives that they vote for and so this is a self-inflicted wound ….. running like a suppurating sore for thirteen (13) years of personal glorification costing taxpayers about $240,000 per year, accompanied by under-achievement in the economic progress for the electorate.
When local New England business persons are asked, ”Would you pay a labourer, shop assistant, or copy boy $240,000 per year to sit in the shade, drunk, and claiming all the credit for the work done by others?” the usual response is a guilty silence.
Locals have been taken for granted by the NOtional$ since 1916 and the present generations of voters are still following the voting patterns of their great-grandparents seeking to build a better community after WWI.
However, the NOtional$ have moved on from representing agricultural interests, that are climate dependent, to the mining sector, where the flow of ”political donations” is uninterrupted by climate change. So, New England residents are left with a region developing as a 19th century rural slum in a 21st century world. Well done, Beetrooter!!
Barnaby told SKY viewers that Permanent Residents would be required to sell their houses within two years of a One Nation (coalition ?) coming to office unless the took out citizenship . He then requested that the interview be re-taped after checking with Pauline and he withdrew the statement.
SKY to their credit played both statements illustrating how One Nation are not over policy detail and even their deputy leader has no idea what their policies are.
The media are boosting One Nation based on what may be rogue opinion polls; beware what you believe and don’t ever go to SKY for factual news.
It has also been reported at SKY that if Barnaby Joyce stands for One Nation in the House of Representatives for the seat of New England, that he would ‘romp in’. Oh Yeah ?
This is what Beetrooter IS NOT doing:
“The “fighting ninth”, as it’s often called, was represented by Democrat Rick Boucher from 1982 to 2010. Known as a friend of working people – farmers, coalminers, small business owners – he focused relentlessly on using federal resources to build prosperity, helping constituents navigate everything from Black Lung benefits to small business loans.”
…….
WHAT IS NEEDED IN REGIONAL & REMOTE AUSTRALIA
“This kind of concrete, locally focused work changes the way rural liberals view their neighbors, and improves the view of Democrats among people in the countryside. It’s a critical step towards rebuilding trust and overcoming the divide. This Community Works strategy is one of the core elements of Rubi’s work and is proving to be a very effective approach to rebuilding trust. More on that in a future article in this series.
And while local action is key, policies matter too. The Rural New Deal, which we wrote with Progressive Democrats of America, provides a comprehensive, bottom up platform to build rural prosperity. It includes rebuilding small town centers, investing in rural healthcare, funding rural schools, dismantling monopolies, relocalize small town banks, and more.”
From The Guardian, 080626, ”Three Things Democrats Must Do to Regain Rural America’s Trust”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/07/democrats-voters-rural-america
Thank you everyone for the comments, laughs, arguments, outrage, observations, memes, regional insights, conspiracy detours, and occasional existential crisis (please see the AIMN Facebook post of this article 😉).
One of the fascinating things about writing satire in 2026 is that sometimes the comment section immediately begins reenacting the article itself in real time.
The article was never really just about Barnaby Joyce. It was about the broader outrage ecosystem:
perpetual grievance,
simplistic slogans,
engagement-driven politics,
performative “common sense,”
media theatrics,
and the strange modern phenomenon where every issue instantly becomes somebody else’s fault.
Some commenters recognised that immediately. Others arrived carrying the usual ingredients:
reheated spam, expired outrage, and enough projection to power a small city.
But interestingly, the comments also revealed something important:
many people are genuinely anxious, alienated, economically stressed, and distrustful of institutions. That frustration is real, even when it gets channelled into outrage politics, culture wars, or conspiracy rabbit holes.
What fascinated me most was the recurring “two versions” phenomenon:
one group insisting the harsh interpretation is exactly the point,
while another insists critics have “misunderstood the policy.”
The policy simultaneously becomes:
extremely aggressive,
completely harmless,
common sense,
and unfairly attacked,
depending on which audience is listening.
That contradiction is not always a bug in modern populist politics. Sometimes it’s the feature.
Meanwhile the article’s line:
“The humans had finally achieved government by Facebook comment section”
seems to have become less satire and more documentary.
Still, among the noise were thoughtful reflections about regional decline, political neglect, media manipulation, economic insecurity, and the exhaustion many Australians feel watching outrage replace serious policy discussion.
So genuinely: thank you.
Even the very outraged Outrage Nation supporters 😉
Because nothing confirms effective satire quite like the comment section accidentally performing the punchline live.
As always, thank you for your brilliant comments on the actual article. I always laugh and learn 😂💬
Lachlan, who said ‘any brown dog can run the country’?
Casue they were right, a good brown cattle dog is much smarter than Barnaby any day.
heather, the quote is attributed to Bill Hayden, from Feb. 1983, when he resigned as leader of the Labor Party so that Bob Hawke could take over and lead the party to a massive win in that year’s federal election.
He said “even a drover’s dog could lead the Labor Party to victory”.