A top politician from Australia’s far-right One Nation party has grabbed headlines after exploding at a misbehaving dog as he was grilled on live TV.<\/p>\n
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce was being interviewed on national broadcaster ABC last night when he interrupted the one-on-one to shriek “sit down!”<\/p>\n
“Sorry, it’s the dog,” he told the journalist.<\/p>\n
The errant pooch then interrupted the proceedings again, with Mr Joyce saying: “I do apologise for this dog, it’s just started to bail up.”<\/p>\n
“Don’t worry about the dog, just answer the question,” replied journalist Sarah Ferguson, who was grilling Mr Joyce on his party leader Pauline Hanson’s recent meeting with far-right British figurehead Tommy Robinson.<\/p>\n
“Don’t be rude. Otherwise, this interview will come to a grinding halt, Sarah,” Mr Joyce snapped back.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time the cattle-farming politician has fallen foul of man’s best friend – he once threatened to kill Johnny Depp’s dogs.<\/p>\n
His outburst drew ire across Australia, with Victoria state politician Georgie Purcell of the Animal Justice Party writing on social media: “If you think this is a normal way to speak to your dog, sit down!”<\/p>\n
Asked about the feedback, Mr Joyce told the Sydney Morning Herald the outcry reflected a divide between the cities and rural Australians.<\/p>\n
“People in the regions laugh about it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“People in the inner city think it’s a war crime.”<\/p>\n
Opinion polls show One Nation, for decades a fringe group led by provocateur Ms Hanson, has become Australia’s most popular party in recent months.<\/p>\n
Ms Hanson has defended her decision to appear on a podcast with Mr Robinson, a former football hooligan turned anti-Islam activist whose profile has soared in recent years.<\/p>\n
She drew outrage back home for telling Mr Robinson the end of the “White Australia” policy – which restricted non-white immigration – in the 1970s was partly responsible for the country’s current ills.<\/p>\n
Ms Hanson later denied she was calling for a return to that policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A top politician from Australia’s far-right One Nation party has grabbed headlines after exploding at a misbehaving dog…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-560549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}