There's absolutely no mistaking the feeling currently permeating the Australian consciousness. It's like an electric current, and we're all tapping into it. Every day becomes a new adventure, full of risk and uncertainties.

Blinking awake, eyes gazing at the ceiling, there's the one persistent and thrilling thought running through our collective minds as we begin our mornings: "I wonder what completely outrageous and provocative thing maverick MP Barnaby Joyce is going to shock the world with today and will I be the first to tell my friends?"

There's absolutely no mistaking the feeling currently permeating the Australian consciousness. It's like an electric current, and we're all tapping into it. Every day becomes a new adventure, full of risk and uncertainties.

Blinking awake, eyes gazing at the ceiling, there's the one persistent and thrilling thought running through our collective minds as we begin our mornings: "I wonder what completely outrageous and provocative thing maverick MP Barnaby Joyce is going to shock the world with today and will I be the first to tell my friends?"

Barnaby Joyce is wonderful and juicy and mental, he really is. If he's not pulling magical figures from the number-sky, ("Let's call it $1,400 million! No wait, $1,400 gajillion-zillion! Let's stop throwing money to the hungry brown people and just build a giant donut named Bettina we can all turn to in times of crisis!") he's shrieking about climate change and leading some frankly startling campaigns against women who dare purchase smaller than a B-cup.

Yes, since "rounding up (adult) magazines from corner shops and filling stations" (there is such a lovely visual that goes with this particular sentence), Senator Joyce has claimed that "publications featuring small-breasted women (are) encouraging paedophilia". A leap for some of us in full control of our faculties perhaps, but when you look at the results claimed by Fiona Patten, Convenor of the Australian Sex Party - "It may be an unintended consequence of the Senator's actions but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late" - I think we can all see where Barnaby is coming from. Perhaps he just has a penchant for massive cans and is a little shy about expressing it, I don't really know how these things work.

Whether we should be making fun of something that clearly took Mr Joyce months and months of painstaking research and repeated viewings of glossies such as Sperms of Endearment and Six Degrees Of Penetration is a matter for debate. The man is obviously a diligent gatekeeper of moral stability and I very much look forward to his racing up and down the catwalks of Milan throwing towels over lanky, flat-chested models whilst screaming at the audience: "For the love of all that is good and holy would you please stop thinking about having sex with children".

He hasn't been above an amusing bon mot or two either, this week helpfully telling the ABC: "I talk to Tony all the time. And we have a very constructive relationship, and a very open relationship. Sounds like it. And not a sexual relationship... We're basically in the same team together, so we chat all the time," which as far as I can tell is some sort of gay joke and should no doubt clear the path for his new career as Australia's premier after-dinner speaker.

Tony Abbott, of course, is treating the entire affair with lots of forced jolly laughs and my-whatever-will-that-cheeky-monkey-come-up-with-next-hahaha-type exclamations through gritted teeth.

"The thing about Barnaby is that he answers questions truthfully. He says what's on his mind and that's a good thing," chortled Abbott on the weekend, adding with a nice dose of parental seriousness: "Now sometimes he is going to have to be corrected because he will get it wrong but honesty and candour are good things in our politicians". Presumably what he actually meant was, "Praise Allah there's finally somebody in the vicinity more prone to making batshit crazy soundbites than me," though as ever his comments are open for interpretation.

He may well be attempting to steer Joyce's careening madness into something that appears palatable to the Australian public, but the truth is it would be far more profitable - and inherently amusing for the rest of us - to simply let B-Jo spout idiotic twaddle 'til he tires himself out and eventually retires to spend his days punching roaming cameramen in the face like Mark Latham. Federal politics needs raving lunatics occasionally, within reason of course. I'm not for a moment suggesting the Coalition arm themselves with terrifying unpredictables like Bill Heffernan and Wilson Tuckey (the latter of whom, it might be noted, Abbott once said: "He is a man who quite rightly fights for the things he believes in and if, from time to time, this minister goes over the top in a cause in which he believes, that is his nature, that is the nature of the man, that is the way this fine Australian operates", leading one to presume that he has some sort of go-to handbook for dealing with outspoken twits). I just think there's room for a little wild-eyed razzamatazz in Canberra, and right now Barnaby Joyce is the man we should turn to.

All Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey's done to humiliate the Opposition so far to is wear a pink tutu on national television. By comparison, he's practically Gandhi. My guess is he's currently using that ruffled netting to hide his shit-eating grin. I do hope he's purchased enough popcorn to last the entire show.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/