At the centre of the current government in Canberra is a fascination with the cultural battle of the day, The Voice, and its associated referendum. Away from Canberra and its cultural distractions there are very real problems - unaffordable power bills, fuel bills, grocery bills.
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Aged care facilities are on their knees as they can't afford the cost of fly in fly out nurses and doctors. Many regional hospitals are without doctors. Sheep prices are merely a couple of dollars a head, and so the cost of the transport is more than the price of the load, meaning it is more economical to shoot them in the paddock than take them to market. Cattle prices are also through the floor.
Out in the countryside the same rulers who gave us The Voice are sending out their bagmen to inflict new high voltage transmission lines to connect new wind factories and solar factories in the quite insane belief that we can run an economy on wind. In its fervour it is disturbingly similar to the formula used by other overzealous, over centralised governments in history and, as such, will have the same outcome, an economic train wreck and the hurt that comes with it.
Is it possible that someone has the gumption to report back to Minister Bowen and Prime Minister Albanese that "things aren't goin that well out there". Maybe the truth will get you purged, so stick with the fantasy, the myth, or the lie.
There will come a time in the future where parents will tell their children, staring at them with incredulity, that in the 2020s Australia considered changing their Constitution to incorporate an unelected oversight body based on race whilst reconfiguring their economy to be driven by windmills.
The parents will also have to tell their children of the consequences of this as hundreds of thousands struggled or could not pay their power bill and, as such, struggled paying for the groceries. They will mention that rent payments went beyond many family's affordability and a new raft of homelessness was seen even in regional cities that never had to contend with this devastating problem in the past.
The parents will have to mention how the referendum split families and communities down the middle in a way they had not experienced before. People wanted the referendum day out of the way, parked and never repeated ever again in the method and form as it had on that day.
To this day not a word has been uttered by the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister or Treasurer as to why sheep are being sold at prices cheaper than a chop in the shop, a whole sheep cheaper than a hamburger. They have other things occupying them. They are wearing 'Yes' t-shirts and walking past houses where families are struggling with the basics in life, power, food and a roof over their heads.
Barnaby Joyce is the Federal Member for New England.
