Enjoy Watching Barnaby Joyce Squirm When Questioned Over Flood Relief

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has been grilled by ABC reporter Leigh Sales after struggling to explain why Liberal-held electorates received better flood support than the neighbouring Labor seats.

Extreme flooding is ravaging much of the east coast of Queensland and New South Wales. But while the path of the disaster does not discriminate, the amount of government support varies substantially based on your postcode — with areas like Lismore receiving support over other devastated areas — like Ballina.

In an interview with Leigh Sales on ABC’s 7:30, Joyce struggled to give a clear explanation for this.

Full interview: Leigh Sales interviews Deputy Prime Minister @Barnaby_Joyce about the government's response to the floods. #abc730 #auspol pic.twitter.com/uUZz48Wgv5

— abc730 (@abc730) March 9, 2022

The federal government announced financial support to help the recovery of three local government areas — Richmond Valley, Clarence Valley and Lismore — which are predominantly Nationals-held seats.

Meanwhile, residents of Ballina and Byron — who reside in Labor seats — cannot access the same disaster relief payments, despite also living through devastating floods. But when asked to explain how this happened, Joyce struggled to answer.

“Well, I don’t think for one second that there is some form of parochialism where payments are being withheld from places because of the way the electorate votes and I think…,” said Joyce, before being prompted by Sales to explain it. “Well, I know the inference behind that and it’s wrong. We make sure we look after all Australians in an equivalent form.

“Obviously Lismore is, from media reports alone, has been an epicentre, not just for the area, but for the nation in its effect. So I would not be surprised if there was an immediate concentration on the city of Lismore because there’s been, it is seen by not only the area, but by the nation as the epicentre, almost the ugly icon in what the flood did.”

While it’s no secret that Lismore is one of the worst affected areas in these floods, Sales made a point to stress that Ballina also weathered its fair share of the damage — with Ballina Hospital needing to be evacuated due to flooding. When Sales noted that the parts of Ballina that fall within National Party seats are included in the disaster relief, while the Labor-held parts aren’t, Joyce rejected any insinuation of pork-barrelling.

“I just completely disagree that areas are not covered because they’re in Labor seats. In fact, I find it really obnoxious people would infer that any person, a Labor person would not look after a National seat or Nationals would not look after a Labor seat. We don’t work like that,” said Joyce.

Joyce doubled down on his defence after Sales pointed out that political parties have a documented history of handing out additional funding and grants to their own seats, or seats they want to win.

“People don’t die because of grants and people are not homeless because of grants. This is an issue that rises way above that and even on issues such as that, you’re going through a grants hub, you’re determining by policy. You might say policy is directed towards making sure you look after certain regional areas which naturally enough is in Nationals area, but this has got nothing to do with that,” said Joyce.

“This is about an emergency, and we don’t go through and say we’ll save this person’s life but not that person’s life. We don’t go to the beach and say we’re only going to save the lives of people who we think vote for us and just the suggestion that we would do something like that is, to be quite frank, it’s offensive because it’s so wrong.”

Despite his denial of any shady business going on behind the scenes, thousands of residents of Ballina, Byron and other areas of New South Wales and Queensland are still in desperate need of support amid the ongoing flooding disaster. You can find out more about how to help here.