Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

Welcome, Australia, to Labor’s philosophical brothel of ideas where any virtue is for sale—purchased for popularity but never loved beyond the dirty, grimy bed where these ideals have been laid down to be abused and deflowered by the Labor Party and by their cohort of senior ministers. It is the philosophical brothel of ideas. It has no substance, it is so tacky, it is so horrible; and everybody—even the Greens—feels they have been used. That is the resentment that is welling up because people—even we on this side—believed that Kevin was serious about what he said. But we were duped.

Now we have this incredible many and varied personality. It has always amazed me. This personality started with ‘2020 Kevin’—that earnest man sitting on the carpet, cross-legged with his clipboard and taking down notes. He was taking notes, he was listening to Australia, he had a thousand people around for tea and he was going to make them all feel satisfied. What did we get out of that? What a revelation: we got the republic. I thought we had already heard that idea. Anyway, that is what we got from that. Then we had ‘Combat Kevin’. This man wants war. He had a war on obesity. He had a war on drugs. He had a war on inflation. He is a very violent man. He had a war on unemployment. He had a war on executive salaries. He was going to help the disadvantaged but he was going to have a war on homelessness. When he was not at war he was starting revolutions. He had a Building the Education Revolution. It was revolution and wars. It was him in his DPCUs with his Steyr under his arm. He was out there having wars.

Then we had ‘Earnest Kevin’, who was saying ‘sorry’ but not actually doing anything about Indigenous disadvantage. He was having review after review; he was having reviews on reviews. He was a man who lived in reviews, who lived as a dilettante wandering across the nation picking up daisies and thinking about the world. It was ‘Earnest Kevin’—