Barnaby Joyce was "post-truth" way before it was cool. In fact, few politicians were better prepared for the new era of "alternative facts" than Barnaby Joyce. Indeed, he was promoted to Deputy Prime Minister after his famous declaration that a modest carbon price would drive the cost of a leg of lamb up to $100.
Our Deputy Prime Minister clearly strives to sound as earthy as the Prime Minister aims to sound erudite, which can make their joint press conferences a sight to behold. While standing next to Mr Turnbull, Barnaby once declared that Australia needs to "get yellow things pushing dirt around so we can get this nation moving". He went on to add that "There is nothing better than to see big yellow things pushing dirt around. It is marvellous". Who needs the Prime Minister's fancy schmancy innovation agendas?
The Deputy Prime Minister gave us another dose of his "plain talking" on Australia Day when he declared that those of his fellow citizens who felt that there might be a better day to celebrate our nation than January 26 were "miserable" and urged them to "crawl under a rock". So much for governing for all.
The factional deal that defines the Liberals and Nationals "coalition" ensures that even though the Nats only get about 5 per cent of the primary vote their party leader is entitled to be our Deputy Prime Minister. Whenever you hear a Liberal MP complain about "minor parties" having too much influence you might have thought they were talking about the Greens, but it's a safe bet they were really talking about their junior Coalition partners.
The problem with having a Deputy PM that represents such a small and shrinking constituency is that he doesn't even pretend to be interested in representing the vast majority of Australians who live in cities.
Take, for example, his recent comments on housing affordability.
The median house price in Sydney is now over $1 million while the minimum wage is less than $35,000, a level that Mr Joyce and his colleagues are reluctant to see rise. For those not lucky enough to inherit a spare house from a wealthy grandparent or live in a parent's spare investment properties while they save up, accumulating the $50,000 to $100,000 for a deposit on a Sydney home is now well beyond the reach of a growing number of Australians.
But Barnaby isn't having a bar of the whingeing city slickers. This week he told the ABC "I get annoyed when people talk about that the only house that you can buy apparently is in Sydney and it's too dear. There are other parts of Australia. I live in one, it's called Tamworth. Houses are much cheaper in Tamworth, houses are much cheaper in Armidale, houses are much cheaper in Toowoomba."
Of course, the reason that house prices are so much cheaper in Barnaby's home town is that young people keep leaving town to look for work in Sydney. But once a kid leaves Tamworth and can't vote for Nationals any more it seems the Deputy Prime Minister doesn't care what happens to them, even though the more kids who leave regional Australia looking for work the dearer Sydney real estate prices will be.
In Barnaby's first full term as the member for New England the unemployment rate rose by 2.7 per cent in his electorate. That's 2094 more unemployed people in his home town. Over the same period the national unemployment rate rose by just 0.1 per cent. Yet he has no sympathy for those who leave town looking for work.
While the proximity of the Deputy PM to high and rising unemployment should be an asset for the Coalition's understanding of the pain of unemployment, the fact that the Coalition deal prevents the Nationals running for Western Sydney seats ensures that Barnaby has no incentive to deliver anything but criticism for those with the temerity to live in an area with jobs growth who are struggling with a rising cost of living.
As Barnaby's decision to spend $25 million relocating the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to his electorate clearly shows, the Nationals aren't even pretending to govern in the nation's interest. Their strategy is as simple as it is selfish. First, secure large amounts of other people's money to fund high-profile boondoggles in their electorates. Second, use the inevitable criticism that such waste attracts as "proof" that they are "working hard for their communities".
But while getting a road widened might ensure there are some "yellow things pushing dirt around", and getting some public servants relocated might attract some local press, the fact is that one-off projects, scattered across vast regional electorates, are not going to get the bush, or the country moving.
There are more than 700,000 people officially defined as unemployed in Australia, and a million more reporting that they have some work, but not enough. Leaving aside the economic and personal tragedy of those without enough work, the political tragedy facing the Nationals is that the Coalition's only plan to create "jobs and growth" is to sign more free trade agreements of the type that Trump just shot down and to introduce big corporate tax cuts of the type that the Senate won't pass.
Only big multinational companies will benefit from the Coalition's $50 billion plan to cut the corporate tax rate, and the only big multinationals that operate in most regional electorates are the mining companies that the farmers are fighting to keep out. Similarly, most National Party voters are deeply sceptical that past free trade agreements or future Trans-Pacific Partnerships deliver anything other than more jobs moving offshore. You can see why Barnaby sounds hysterical.
The Nationals, having lost a seat to the Greens in the last NSW election, are now fearing even more losses to One Nation at the next Queensland election. For decades they have been willing to go along with the Liberals' agenda of tax cuts for big business and free trade agreements that have destroyed manufacturing in exchange for money to fund projects at which they could cut the ribbon.
But voters increasingly realise that the problems facing regional Australia are far wider than the imagination of National MPs. The vast majority of country kids go to public schools and the vast majority of older country people will never set foot inside a private hospital for the simple reason that the private sector can make more money in Toorak than it can in Tamworth. National Party electorates have lower than average income, higher than average welfare dependence and often don't have a private hospital within 500 kilometres. Whenever the Nats vote with the Libs to cut public services or welfare they are voting against the interests of their voters.
Barnaby Joyce and his colleagues in the National Party have done a great job of turning a minor proportion of the primary vote into a major voice in Australian politics. But the problem facing their electorates, and the rest of the country, can no longer be solved with a good bulldozing.
Barnaby may well thrive in a "post-truth" environment. He might be the "perfect foil" to Pauline Hanson, but the problems facing Australia aren't political, they are real, and alternative facts do not deliver an alternative vision for our economy. On the contrary, they are usually used to conceal the fact that we need one.
Richard Denniss is the chief economist for The Australia Institute.
Twitter: @RDNS_TAI