Australian Broadcasting Corporation
INSIDERS
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2005/s1523134.htm
Broadcast: 04/12/2005
Joyce wins
Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce has been named the Insiders political personality of the year.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Nominations now for the Insiders political personality of the year. Deliberately framed that way, so you can make of it what you want.
VIRGINIA TRIOLI, 702 ABC SYDNEY: What a challenge. What a choice. Based on the idea of a personality who has a persona and has created impact, mine was Petro Georgiou, the federal member of Kooyong, who has very successfully turned himself into the so-called conscience of the Coalition and been one of the few to actually break ranks, go public and to achieve something in terms of anti-terrorism legislation.
MATT PRICE, THE AUSTRALIAN: Mine wasn't Petro. I had Howard, just because he has had such an amazing year and his sense of comedy right up to the end with "Peter came to me" was just terrific.
PIERS ACKERMAN, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Mine was Mark Latham, only because his toxic legacy will seep through the political air waves, not only through this year, but it will come again when we come up for the next election.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Mine was Greg Combet for his work on the Hardies case for one, but secondly, I think he was about the only person who really disturbed Howard's momentum in almost 10 years. Here are the nominations as submitted by our regular panellists - Mark Latham, John Howard, Petro Georgiou, Greg Combet, Barnaby Joyce and Malcolm Turnbull. Now some observations of the Prime Minister: "As the year ends, he has achieved nearly all his political aims and has become the best known political leader in Australian history, here and overseas." - (Insiders panellist). And this, and I think this nails it: "Even when he's down, he's engineering the whole political show." - (Insiders panellist). And this of Barnaby Joyce: "He demonstrated that the Government's control of the Upper House is not bullet proof." - (Insiders panellist). And from another panellist: "My shared vote goes to the two politicians who are recognised by their first names in their first year of office - Barnaby and Malcolm." - (Insiders panellist). So here is the tally board. And as it happened, most of our absent panellists voted for Senator Barnaby Joyce. He wins with 5.5 votes, John Howard - 4, Greg Combet - 2, Petro Georgiou - 2, Mark Latham - 1 and Malcolm Turnbull - 0.5, a solid base to build upon next year. And we're now joined by our winner in the Brisbane studio, Senator Barnaby Joyce.
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE, NATIONAL PARTY: G'day, Barrie.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Take a look at your monitor there, Senator, and you will see, Insiders political personality of the year 2005, Senator Barnaby Joyce. You must be very excited?
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: Looks awfully like a poisoned chalice, Barrie. And my earpiece has just fallen out. It looks awfully like a poisoned chalice. I thank you very much for making my life exceedingly difficult for the last week of Parliament.
BARRIE CASSIDY: At what stage of the year did you think you had it in the bag?
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: As of about five minutes ago, Barrie! I'm sure the Prime Minister will invite me round for a cup of tea and a good flogging.
MATT PRICE: Having saved Christmas, Barnaby...
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: Having saved Christmas, that's right!
MATT PRICE: ...what's next?
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: We'll go out and find other obscure days through the year which we need to save, and - but no, I think we had - I tried to just do our job, make sure the Senate does its job. You've got a moral responsibility when you control both Houses to make sure that the Senate does what it's supposed to do, otherwise the Australian people have got something to be concerned about.
BARRIE CASSIDY: It's been an incredibly hectic year for you. Did you ever get a time to enjoy it?
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: I think I will enjoy it in about a week's time. I'm looking forward to it finishing. There has been a hell of a lot of work there, and especially there has been some major pieces of legislation coming through, and I'm a novice at the game in trying to read them and make some sense of them and other people are telling you not to bother reading them and they never make any sense. So it will be interesting to settle down next year and see how it all panders out.
PIERS ACKERMAN: Senator Joyce, how are your diaries coming?
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: Here is a funny story for you. I was driving up to Parliament House and one of the taxi drivers said, "Have you started your memoirs?" I said, "No". He said, "I think you should." That's rather ominous! I haven't started writing my diaries, but they will be an interesting read if I ever get round to it!
PIERS ACKERMAN: We better put a bid in now!
BARRIE CASSIDY: On the sedition laws, are you going to take a close interest in that as the review is conducted next year or do you think industrial relations was where you needed to do the heavy lifting?
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: There are other issues coming up apart from the sedition laws. The voluntary student unionism debate will be an active one, and you know, there will be a range of things. There is a lot of attention already being paid to the sedition laws, and Malcolm Turnbull and Senator Brandis have been very active on that front. I think you have a strong role to play when there is not a sort of full debate in an area, but the sedition laws seem to be opening up into a very encompassing debate from within the Government side so I don't think they need any help from me.
VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Barnaby, I don't want to rain on your parade, but Kim Beazley, the Opposition Leader, mentioned to me on Friday that he thinks you're a spent political force, that you've been bought off left, right and centre, that you're not the winner of that trophy, really. How do you respond?
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: I respect that he would have a very good position to make a judgment like that.
VIRGINIA TRIOLI: You're learning, mate, you're learning!
BARRIE CASSIDY: Alright. I think we'll leave it on that note. But look, Matt Price will drop around during the week into your office and personally hand deliver this cup and no doubt it will go straight to your pool room!
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: I look forward to that. Look forward to catching up with Matt, too.
MATT PRICE: See you on Monday, Banana-by!
SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: Thank you very much, my friend Matthew!