A couple of studs? More like a couple of absolute duds steering us the wrong way

The Advertiser

24-07-2025

Look, I know milk comes from cows and eggs come from hens. I've even sung "Old McDonald had a farm" to my grandchildren, on loop. And yeah, yeah, money doesn't grow on trees.
You may have read that two Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, representing the federal seat of New England; and Michael McCormack, representing the Riverina, want to abandon net zero.
It's kind of embarrassing because they are just copying Donald Trump (and we know how that worked out for Temu Trump, our pet name for Peter Dutton). This week, The New York Times reported: "The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan."
So catastrophic decision from the US and idiotic grandstanding from the Nationals (dear heaven, the two political parties in this country with the names which bear no semblance to reality - Liberal and National).
But this week's comment in response to the derangements of Joyce and McCormack by opposition energy spokesperson Dan Tehan totally perplexed me from an agricultural point of view. He described two former deputy prime ministers, now backbenchers, Barnaby Joyce and Michael McCormack, as "two steers in a paddock". I hastened to Google for agricultural assistance.
A steer, by the way, is a boycow* with his nuts knackered. According to at least one livestock expert I spoke to, it's normal for two steers to be in a paddock. Absolutely normal. What would they do to each other? Absolutely nothing. They have no balls. Wow. Similar.
John House, associate professor and unit head, livestock veterinary teaching and research unit at the University of Sydney confirms you can put a bunch of steers in a paddock, no problemo.
"They just get along, chew grass and chill," he says.
Don't think old mate Dan Tehan's made an error. These two aren't bulls at a gate but a couple of has-beens hoping they can be a bit more.
Right now, that is so unlikely. Did these two miss the results of the last election? Obvs.
After I asked John House all of the farming questions, I asked him about the whole net zero thing. He said bluntly: "I used to vote Liberal but I stopped because of their attitudes to climate change."
Same with the rest of the country. They changed their votes too.
Says House: "Who has got the most to lose? Primary producers - they are at the coal face. They are the ones getting hit by the floods and the droughts."
This appears to be the consensus except among a tiny group of ancient members of the conservative parties in Australia.
I ask one conservative politician what he thinks about these two.
To sum up: Australia has actual things to worry about, such as floods and fires and algal blooms devouring our waterways. And Barnaby Joyce wants to grandstand about net zero. Completely bonkers? I ask. Very, comes the swift reply.
And the Nationals in general? "It is a very small membership, not representative of rural and regional Australia. Their base is completely unrepresentative, more like the Sky After Dark crazy brigade.
"Among the three octogenarian men** who are branch members, Joyce would be some kind of hero. The party is not representative of the communities they serve let alone the country."
Very harsh. And if Barnaby Joyce (quick reminder: publicly unfaithful to his wife, didn't know if he was the dad to his love child, suggesting HPV vaccines would lead to promiscuity, public drunkenness) were to walk down the main street of any of our major cities, I reckon folks would be more likely to point and laugh than actually approach him for help.
Which is what I reckon politicians should be about. Helping us. Helping the country.
But how do people in the country feel about climate change? And when I say people in the country, I mean the people who grow our food. Funny you should ask.
Even conservatives pointed me to Farmers for Climate Action (FCA), a farmer-led organisation with over 8000 members. It works to manage risks and "find opportunities to adapt to, and mitigate, climate change". Love that for them. And for us.
READ MORE JENNA PRICE:
CEO Natalie Collard says FCA conducts a regular survey of members.
At last count, 55 per cent of members named climate change as the number-one threat to their farming business. At 15 per cent and in second place, we had everyone's favourite: increasing bureaucracy and red tape. Farmers for Climate Action was founded 10 years ago because farmers felt the government wasn't taking farming concerns seriously, nor reflecting farmers' views on climate change.
Collard says: "Their view was, 'We are living it, we know'."
I ask her what FCA thinks about this latest Nationals move.
She speaks like a politician here: "Nationals policy is a matter for the Nationals."
Speaking of Nationals, at the last election Michael McCormack won his seat of Riverina convincingly and maybe rolling back net zero is the vibe he gets when he's visiting pubs and clubs in the area.
Fourth in the 2025 vote was community independent Jenny Rolfe, who came from a standing start last December. She says McCormack has not been listening to the entire electorate.
"He is in an echo chamber of people and failing to show leadership of engaging with the entire community," says Rolfe
"If we don't take action on climate change then those of us in the regions will feel the greatest impacts of inaction."
Amen to that. Don't let these blokes steer you the wrong way. Sorry.
*look, we all know what a cow is, right? But I can't for the life of me find a nongendered word for a single bovine animal so boycow it is. Kind of like cowboy.
**I asked about this. Sexist and ageist much? Apparently not.
Look, I know milk comes from cows and eggs come from hens. I've even sung "Old McDonald had a farm" to my grandchildren, on loop. And yeah, yeah, money doesn't grow on trees.
You may have read that two Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, representing the federal seat of New England; and Michael McCormack, representing the Riverina, want to abandon net zero.
It's kind of embarrassing because they are just copying Donald Trump (and we know how that worked out for Temu Trump, our pet name for Peter Dutton). This week, The New York Times reported: "The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan."
So catastrophic decision from the US and idiotic grandstanding from the Nationals (dear heaven, the two political parties in this country with the names which bear no semblance to reality - Liberal and National).
But this week's comment in response to the derangements of Joyce and McCormack by opposition energy spokesperson Dan Tehan totally perplexed me from an agricultural point of view. He described two former deputy prime ministers, now backbenchers, Barnaby Joyce and Michael McCormack, as "two steers in a paddock". I hastened to Google for agricultural assistance.
A steer, by the way, is a boycow* with his nuts knackered. According to at least one livestock expert I spoke to, it's normal for two steers to be in a paddock. Absolutely normal. What would they do to each other? Absolutely nothing. They have no balls. Wow. Similar.
John House, associate professor and unit head, livestock veterinary teaching and research unit at the University of Sydney confirms you can put a bunch of steers in a paddock, no problemo.
"They just get along, chew grass and chill," he says.
Don't think old mate Dan Tehan's made an error. These two aren't bulls at a gate but a couple of has-beens hoping they can be a bit more.
Right now, that is so unlikely. Did these two miss the results of the last election? Obvs.
After I asked John House all of the farming questions, I asked him about the whole net zero thing. He said bluntly: "I used to vote Liberal but I stopped because of their attitudes to climate change."
Same with the rest of the country. They changed their votes too.
Says House: "Who has got the most to lose? Primary producers - they are at the coal face. They are the ones getting hit by the floods and the droughts."
This appears to be the consensus except among a tiny group of ancient members of the conservative parties in Australia.
I ask one conservative politician what he thinks about these two.
To sum up: Australia has actual things to worry about, such as floods and fires and algal blooms devouring our waterways. And Barnaby Joyce wants to grandstand about net zero. Completely bonkers? I ask. Very, comes the swift reply.
And the Nationals in general? "It is a very small membership, not representative of rural and regional Australia. Their base is completely unrepresentative, more like the Sky After Dark crazy brigade.
"Among the three octogenarian men** who are branch members, Joyce would be some kind of hero. The party is not representative of the communities they serve let alone the country."
Very harsh. And if Barnaby Joyce (quick reminder: publicly unfaithful to his wife, didn't know if he was the dad to his love child, suggesting HPV vaccines would lead to promiscuity, public drunkenness) were to walk down the main street of any of our major cities, I reckon folks would be more likely to point and laugh than actually approach him for help.
Which is what I reckon politicians should be about. Helping us. Helping the country.
But how do people in the country feel about climate change? And when I say people in the country, I mean the people who grow our food. Funny you should ask.
Even conservatives pointed me to Farmers for Climate Action (FCA), a farmer-led organisation with over 8000 members. It works to manage risks and "find opportunities to adapt to, and mitigate, climate change". Love that for them. And for us.
READ MORE JENNA PRICE:
CEO Natalie Collard says FCA conducts a regular survey of members.
At last count, 55 per cent of members named climate change as the number-one threat to their farming business. At 15 per cent and in second place, we had everyone's favourite: increasing bureaucracy and red tape. Farmers for Climate Action was founded 10 years ago because farmers felt the government wasn't taking farming concerns seriously, nor reflecting farmers' views on climate change.
Collard says: "Their view was, 'We are living it, we know'."
I ask her what FCA thinks about this latest Nationals move.
She speaks like a politician here: "Nationals policy is a matter for the Nationals."
Speaking of Nationals, at the last election Michael McCormack won his seat of Riverina convincingly and maybe rolling back net zero is the vibe he gets when he's visiting pubs and clubs in the area.
Fourth in the 2025 vote was community independent Jenny Rolfe, who came from a standing start last December. She says McCormack has not been listening to the entire electorate.
"He is in an echo chamber of people and failing to show leadership of engaging with the entire community," says Rolfe
"If we don't take action on climate change then those of us in the regions will feel the greatest impacts of inaction."
Amen to that. Don't let these blokes steer you the wrong way. Sorry.
*look, we all know what a cow is, right? But I can't for the life of me find a nongendered word for a single bovine animal so boycow it is. Kind of like cowboy.
**I asked about this. Sexist and ageist much? Apparently not.
Look, I know milk comes from cows and eggs come from hens. I've even sung "Old McDonald had a farm" to my grandchildren, on loop. And yeah, yeah, money doesn't grow on trees.
You may have read that two Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, representing the federal seat of New England; and Michael McCormack, representing the Riverina, want to abandon net zero.
It's kind of embarrassing because they are just copying Donald Trump (and we know how that worked out for Temu Trump, our pet name for Peter Dutton). This week, The New York Times reported: "The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan."
So catastrophic decision from the US and idiotic grandstanding from the Nationals (dear heaven, the two political parties in this country with the names which bear no semblance to reality - Liberal and National).
But this week's comment in response to the derangements of Joyce and McCormack by opposition energy spokesperson Dan Tehan totally perplexed me from an agricultural point of view. He described two former deputy prime ministers, now backbenchers, Barnaby Joyce and Michael McCormack, as "two steers in a paddock". I hastened to Google for agricultural assistance.
A steer, by the way, is a boycow* with his nuts knackered. According to at least one livestock expert I spoke to, it's normal for two steers to be in a paddock. Absolutely normal. What would they do to each other? Absolutely nothing. They have no balls. Wow. Similar.
John House, associate professor and unit head, livestock veterinary teaching and research unit at the University of Sydney confirms you can put a bunch of steers in a paddock, no problemo.
"They just get along, chew grass and chill," he says.
Don't think old mate Dan Tehan's made an error. These two aren't bulls at a gate but a couple of has-beens hoping they can be a bit more.
Right now, that is so unlikely. Did these two miss the results of the last election? Obvs.
After I asked John House all of the farming questions, I asked him about the whole net zero thing. He said bluntly: "I used to vote Liberal but I stopped because of their attitudes to climate change."
Same with the rest of the country. They changed their votes too.
Says House: "Who has got the most to lose? Primary producers - they are at the coal face. They are the ones getting hit by the floods and the droughts."
This appears to be the consensus except among a tiny group of ancient members of the conservative parties in Australia.
I ask one conservative politician what he thinks about these two.
To sum up: Australia has actual things to worry about, such as floods and fires and algal blooms devouring our waterways. And Barnaby Joyce wants to grandstand about net zero. Completely bonkers? I ask. Very, comes the swift reply.
And the Nationals in general? "It is a very small membership, not representative of rural and regional Australia. Their base is completely unrepresentative, more like the Sky After Dark crazy brigade.
"Among the three octogenarian men** who are branch members, Joyce would be some kind of hero. The party is not representative of the communities they serve let alone the country."
Very harsh. And if Barnaby Joyce (quick reminder: publicly unfaithful to his wife, didn't know if he was the dad to his love child, suggesting HPV vaccines would lead to promiscuity, public drunkenness) were to walk down the main street of any of our major cities, I reckon folks would be more likely to point and laugh than actually approach him for help.
Which is what I reckon politicians should be about. Helping us. Helping the country.
But how do people in the country feel about climate change? And when I say people in the country, I mean the people who grow our food. Funny you should ask.
Even conservatives pointed me to Farmers for Climate Action (FCA), a farmer-led organisation with over 8000 members. It works to manage risks and "find opportunities to adapt to, and mitigate, climate change". Love that for them. And for us.
READ MORE JENNA PRICE:
CEO Natalie Collard says FCA conducts a regular survey of members.
At last count, 55 per cent of members named climate change as the number-one threat to their farming business. At 15 per cent and in second place, we had everyone's favourite: increasing bureaucracy and red tape. Farmers for Climate Action was founded 10 years ago because farmers felt the government wasn't taking farming concerns seriously, nor reflecting farmers' views on climate change.
Collard says: "Their view was, 'We are living it, we know'."
I ask her what FCA thinks about this latest Nationals move.
She speaks like a politician here: "Nationals policy is a matter for the Nationals."
Speaking of Nationals, at the last election Michael McCormack won his seat of Riverina convincingly and maybe rolling back net zero is the vibe he gets when he's visiting pubs and clubs in the area.
Fourth in the 2025 vote was community independent Jenny Rolfe, who came from a standing start last December. She says McCormack has not been listening to the entire electorate.
"He is in an echo chamber of people and failing to show leadership of engaging with the entire community," says Rolfe
"If we don't take action on climate change then those of us in the regions will feel the greatest impacts of inaction."
Amen to that. Don't let these blokes steer you the wrong way. Sorry.
*look, we all know what a cow is, right? But I can't for the life of me find a nongendered word for a single bovine animal so boycow it is. Kind of like cowboy.
**I asked about this. Sexist and ageist much? Apparently not.
Look, I know milk comes from cows and eggs come from hens. I've even sung "Old McDonald had a farm" to my grandchildren, on loop. And yeah, yeah, money doesn't grow on trees.
You may have read that two Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, representing the federal seat of New England; and Michael McCormack, representing the Riverina, want to abandon net zero.
It's kind of embarrassing because they are just copying Donald Trump (and we know how that worked out for Temu Trump, our pet name for Peter Dutton). This week, The New York Times reported: "The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan."
So catastrophic decision from the US and idiotic grandstanding from the Nationals (dear heaven, the two political parties in this country with the names which bear no semblance to reality - Liberal and National).
But this week's comment in response to the derangements of Joyce and McCormack by opposition energy spokesperson Dan Tehan totally perplexed me from an agricultural point of view. He described two former deputy prime ministers, now backbenchers, Barnaby Joyce and Michael McCormack, as "two steers in a paddock". I hastened to Google for agricultural assistance.
A steer, by the way, is a boycow* with his nuts knackered. According to at least one livestock expert I spoke to, it's normal for two steers to be in a paddock. Absolutely normal. What would they do to each other? Absolutely nothing. They have no balls. Wow. Similar.
John House, associate professor and unit head, livestock veterinary teaching and research unit at the University of Sydney confirms you can put a bunch of steers in a paddock, no problemo.
"They just get along, chew grass and chill," he says.
Don't think old mate Dan Tehan's made an error. These two aren't bulls at a gate but a couple of has-beens hoping they can be a bit more.
Right now, that is so unlikely. Did these two miss the results of the last election? Obvs.
After I asked John House all of the farming questions, I asked him about the whole net zero thing. He said bluntly: "I used to vote Liberal but I stopped because of their attitudes to climate change."
Same with the rest of the country. They changed their votes too.
Says House: "Who has got the most to lose? Primary producers - they are at the coal face. They are the ones getting hit by the floods and the droughts."
This appears to be the consensus except among a tiny group of ancient members of the conservative parties in Australia.
I ask one conservative politician what he thinks about these two.
To sum up: Australia has actual things to worry about, such as floods and fires and algal blooms devouring our waterways. And Barnaby Joyce wants to grandstand about net zero. Completely bonkers? I ask. Very, comes the swift reply.
And the Nationals in general? "It is a very small membership, not representative of rural and regional Australia. Their base is completely unrepresentative, more like the Sky After Dark crazy brigade.
"Among the three octogenarian men** who are branch members, Joyce would be some kind of hero. The party is not representative of the communities they serve let alone the country."
Very harsh. And if Barnaby Joyce (quick reminder: publicly unfaithful to his wife, didn't know if he was the dad to his love child, suggesting HPV vaccines would lead to promiscuity, public drunkenness) were to walk down the main street of any of our major cities, I reckon folks would be more likely to point and laugh than actually approach him for help.
Which is what I reckon politicians should be about. Helping us. Helping the country.
But how do people in the country feel about climate change? And when I say people in the country, I mean the people who grow our food. Funny you should ask.
Even conservatives pointed me to Farmers for Climate Action (FCA), a farmer-led organisation with over 8000 members. It works to manage risks and "find opportunities to adapt to, and mitigate, climate change". Love that for them. And for us.
READ MORE JENNA PRICE:
CEO Natalie Collard says FCA conducts a regular survey of members.
At last count, 55 per cent of members named climate change as the number-one threat to their farming business. At 15 per cent and in second place, we had everyone's favourite: increasing bureaucracy and red tape. Farmers for Climate Action was founded 10 years ago because farmers felt the government wasn't taking farming concerns seriously, nor reflecting farmers' views on climate change.
Collard says: "Their view was, 'We are living it, we know'."
I ask her what FCA thinks about this latest Nationals move.
She speaks like a politician here: "Nationals policy is a matter for the Nationals."
Speaking of Nationals, at the last election Michael McCormack won his seat of Riverina convincingly and maybe rolling back net zero is the vibe he gets when he's visiting pubs and clubs in the area.
Fourth in the 2025 vote was community independent Jenny Rolfe, who came from a standing start last December. She says McCormack has not been listening to the entire electorate.
"He is in an echo chamber of people and failing to show leadership of engaging with the entire community," says Rolfe
"If we don't take action on climate change then those of us in the regions will feel the greatest impacts of inaction."
Amen to that. Don't let these blokes steer you the wrong way. Sorry.
*look, we all know what a cow is, right? But I can't for the life of me find a nongendered word for a single bovine animal so boycow it is. Kind of like cowboy.
**I asked about this. Sexist and ageist much? Apparently not.