Peter Strempel, 17 July 2026
When I read that ex National Party bull at the gate, Barnaby Joyce, newly motivated to join the shambolic One Nation he thinks he can wrest away from its current leader, declared Australia a Christian country, I thought he’d just had a few too many shandies that day.
But of course context is everything. He was at a Christofascist rally, masquerading as a ‘gala dinner’ promoting anti-abortion messages, rubbing shoulders with fringe people like the Make Australia Christian Again crowd. One wonders where those people get their funding. And how Joyce thinks this will track with women voters.
On the other hand, Joyce is better known for being drunk than moral integrity, beliefs in anything other than his own fortunes, political nous, leadership qualities, or coherent media statements. But he might just be smarter drunk than Hanson is when completely sober.
The Christian remark was really about wooing white Christian nationalists who are probably better known as neo-Nazis, the genuine Christofascists with theocratic ambitions, and those deluded country folk who still think the church—any Christian church—stands for petit-bourgeois decency and stability. Joyce was, after all, a National for years, and could be credited with knowing his former party got some of those votes in the past. Perhaps he’s also hoping to steal some of those votes away from the Liberal Party, which has been similarly wooing the far right, if somewhat more coyly than Joyce
It’s galling to admit Joyce is entirely correct on another level, whether he is fully conscious of it is another question, like the one about his state of consciousness when his face is beetroot red and he’s flat on his back son some footpath.
Anyway, so long as the English monarch, who is also head of the Anglican Church, remains Australian head of state, no interpretation of the constitution against religious discrimination can make a secular state of Australia. Sanctimoniously hypocritical prayers are still part of parliamentary commencement rituals, as if anyone in that place ever demonstrated any recognizable Christian virtues. Perhaps they just mean to acknowledge all the vices of Christianity over the centuries.
And there persists a quite bigoted attitude among those Protestants who dominated the Liberal Party and business establishment from the Menzies era onwards against Catholics of Italian and Greek descent, though today it seems more focused on Muslims than on Catholics.
Perhaps another foundation for that Protestant bigotry can be undermined by the next census. If enough Australians nominate that they don’t have any religious affiliations, and the statistical reality becomes that most Australian people are in fact atheists, meaning the country is secular despite the symbolisms of state.
One
other thought. Perhaps it hadn’t escaped Joyce that the
antisemitism royal commission has actually stirred up quite a bit of
resentment, including especially against Israeli Judaeofascism. I
wouldn’t put it past Joyce to be opportunistic enough to ogle that
demographic the way he has been photographed lecherously ogling Vikki
Campion’s legs.