AAA<\/p>\n
By now there probably isn\u2019t a person left in Australia who hasn\u2019t had occasion to contemplate the primal roar unleashed by Barnaby Joyce on his gormless staffy-cross, Stella, on camera this week.<\/p>\n
Equal parts unbridled rage and frenzied pathos, his spray erupted like a riotous display of vocal pyrotechnics. If I were a more entrepreneurial soul, I would take the recording, send it offshore and have it made into a version of one of those demented plastic novelty Yes!\/No! buttons that erupts every time you smash it with your hand.<\/p>\n
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One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce appears in an interview with his dog, Stella, on Nine\u2019s Today on Wednesday.Nine<\/p>\n
I\u2019m serious about this. I\u2019ve had a solid 48 hours to think about it and there\u2019s definitely a market for Joyce\u2019s voice randomly hollering \u201cSiddown!\u201d at a useless bunch of miscreants. To, wit: the kids who won\u2019t come in for dinner? \u201cSiddown!\u201d The co-workers standing around gas-bagging instead of starting the meeting on time? \u201cSiddown!\u201d The wedding guests milling about and eyeing the champagne before the ceremony? \u201cSiddown, siddown, SIDDOWN!\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been instructive to note that although the footage made headlines overseas, the local response to Joyce\u2019s outburst has been relatively low-key. Victorian Animal Justice MP Georgie Purcell took quickly to Melbourne radio to imply that Joyce was a closet dog-hater before unleashing a dazzling display of logic yoga, accusing him of \u201ccreating a culture of disrespect that can lead onto much more adverse outcomes when it comes to our animals\u201d.<\/p>\n
For what it\u2019s worth, my working hypothesis is that while most people cringed on the dog\u2019s behalf, they were also quietly thanking the gods of broadcast journalism that they weren\u2019t caught on camera the last time they intended to address someone in C-flat and whatever they said ended up coming out in F-(extremely) sharp.<\/p>\n
Joyce, meanwhile, looked like a man on the edge during Monday night\u2019s interview on the ABC\u2019s 7.30. For a bloke whose skin tone typically ranges from raging beetroot to throbbing vermillion anyway, he seems to be finding it quite stressful acting as executive cleaner-upper of whichever leg of Pauline Hanson\u2019s latest magical mystery tour we\u2019re up to.<\/p>\n
![\"Barnaby](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/02b5dd332588d4bd0b568d1fe42e1206946bb01fa776d3d3d97045c738871c64.gif\")
Barnaby Joyce patting his dog, Stella, on Wednesday morning\u2019s Today show appearance.Nine<\/p>\n
But all this brings us to the interesting thing about Barnaby. Faced with the quiet opprobrium of voters who simultaneously understood the momentary lapse in public decorum and still wanted to Fedex Stella a consolation bowl of kibble, what did he do?<\/p>\n
He pivoted spectacularly from dog whisperer (\u201cStella loved me in the morning!\u201d) to dog whistler, accusing Purcell and her band of merry sympathisers of rampant inner-city luvvy-ism, and informing them that they were simply misreading the play. Working dogs, he opined, were a different breed from their urban compatriots. If people outside New England didn\u2019t understand that because they no speaka da salt-of-the-earth country folk, what was he meant to do about it?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not his fault that Stella, an otherwise faithful farmhand who presumably spends her days chasing livestock and sneering at her city-dwelling contemporaries, was treated (in the moment) like the lippy working girl she is.<\/p>\n
Related Article \u201cShe was right underneath my feet, underneath the deck \u2026 and just barking. Not sort of like quietly \u2018woof woof\u2019. It was continual,\u201d Joyce said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t hear the questions and I\u2019m sort of winging it. I\u2019m not on the balls of my toes, so I\u2019m getting a little bit angry. Then I\u2019m getting really angry. I verbally assaulted the dog, which I\u2019m incredibly sorry for.\u201d<\/p>\n But all those urban lefties choking on their puppachinos were barking up the wrong tree, Joyce added. \u201cPeople in regional areas laugh about it,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople in the inner-city think it\u2019s a war crime.\u201d<\/p>\n And checkmate. This whole episode isn\u2019t a cautionary tale of what happens to your blood pressure when you throw your lot in with a certain flaming redhead and her White \u201cAustralian\u201d policy; it\u2019s actually the latest salvo in a culture war between city versus country dwellers.<\/p>\n Frankly, it was a masterstroke, and you don\u2019t need Roy Morgan to tell you it probably didn\u2019t cost him any (vibrant crimson) skin with his rusted-on constituents. Joyce might have an unrivalled history of unforced errors on the personal front, but it\u2019s times like these when you start to understand why he secured 52.22 per cent of the vote in New England last year, which was more than double that of the next candidate.<\/p>\n Related Article The truth is, there\u2019s not much upside for Joyce in courting the votes of inner-city types who are otherwise consumed with thoughts of their fretful, cosseted, antidepressant-addicted, bespoke-oodle dogs. They don\u2019t live in New England, and they\u2019re probably too busy hyphenating their fur babies\u2019 surnames or booking them into dog therapy to unpack issues stemming from the lack of grass in their lives to care about the gospel according to Joyce. And even if they did, they wouldn\u2019t \u2013 and in fact, couldn\u2019t \u2013 vote for him personally.<\/p>\n Ultimately, that\u2019s the point. Joyce has been around politics long enough to know that his scary Stella-disciplining voice would have (rightly) landed him in the dog house with animal lovers, especially those who tend to anthropomorphise their pets. Best then to apologise (sort of) and then put his detractors immediately on blast. It\u2019s a dog-eat-dog world, after all.<\/p>\n Michelle Cazzulino is a Sydney writer.<\/p>\n Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"Joyce\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/efd76f7f6f7d7e1cef038c727a18eeacb5ea8eb4.jpeg\")
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