Barnaby Joyce Compared Indigenous Voice To Nazi Germany In Unhinged Sky News Interview
Joyce's comments were quickly slammed by anti-discrimination groups.
Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and amateur TikToker Barnaby Joyce has been formally asked to apologise after comparing the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to racial discrimination laws used in Nazi Germany.
Using arms wrought from a career spent wrestling with contradictions — like centring a political stance on heterosexual family values while secretly having an affair with a staffer — Joyce drew the longest bow humanely possible this week by comparing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to Nazi Germany.
Speaking in an interview with Andrew Bolt for Sky News, Joyce’s denunciation of the key aspect of the Uluru Statement of the Heart was made on a segment dedicated to the “threat” an Indigenous Voice could have on future fossil fuel development after the traditional owners of the Tiwi Islands won a high court challenged to stop a proposed $4.7 offshore gas project last month.
Exposing the baseless fear that a left-leaning High Court combined with an enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament could lead to despotic infringements of liberties like “a new caveat on your private asset, [or] a new encumbrance on how you act”, Joyce compared the Voice to laws passed in Nazi Germany which banned Jewish people from working within civil service.
“It’s not the same, it’s vastly less, vastly less noxious, but the Civil Service Act of Germany in 1933 also delineated people’s rights on the premise of their race, their belief,” Joyce said to Sky News.
“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” he added.
The comments attracted formal complaints from Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission, who called the comments “deeply inappropriate” according to The Guardian.
“With this careless remark, Mr Joyce betrays an ignorance of what really happened in Nazi Germany. Nothing about the voice to parliament comes close to the evil actions and laws of the Third Reich aimed at dehumanising Jewish citizens of Germany.” Dr Abramovich said.
While the comments come as no surprise considering Barnaby’s track record, it was certainly a shocking reminder that against all foreseeable odds, Joyce is still kicking about in parliament, somehow.