Opinion: Barnaby crying poor for right reasons, but the execution is off

The New England MP said that he was struggling to make ends meet on his $211,000 a year pay packet.

He's turning the heater off at night (which most people do), killing his own meat, not going out for dinner and buying cheap groceries.

He was attempting to use his personal situation as a way to move forward the debate around raising the NewStart allowance - something several Nationals MPs want to do, breaking ranks from their Liberal colleagues.

Unfortunately Mr Joyce's comparison has entirely missed the mark.

And worst part is he's completely derailed the conversation around raising NewStart, al la the new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's famous "throw a dead cat on the table" strategy.

While his heart may have been in the right place, the story is no longer about NewStart, it's once again about Barnaby Joyce.

It's about Barnaby Joyce saying he's too poor to afford more than one cup of coffee a day, despite his $200,000-plus salary.

On top of his salary, Mr Joyce gets an additional $30,000 for chairing the Innovation, Industry, Science and Resources Committee

He also has the benefit of numerous parliamentary entitlements - there are extensive travel entitlements and superannuation benefits.

For every night Mr Joyce spends in Canberra, he's given an allowance of $273, which is not regarded as taxable income.

Again, Mr Joyce may have been trying to do the right thing by trying to push along the NewStart debate, but he's an experience politician and should have known it would play out like this.

Then again, Mr Joyce is also a wily media manager - maybe he's hoping that after the media and public have had their turn criticising him, the debate will turn back to raising NewStart with renewed vigour.

Hopefully this isn't the end of the discussion; the Newstart unemployment benefit hasn't risen beyond inflation since the mid-1990s.

Jamison Murphy is an ACM journalist.