Great piece, Brian! It's good to see a bit of physics thrown into the discourse, albeit with some poetic licence.

An alternative hypothesis is that Joyce, Hockey and Abbott believe that the product of the uncertainties in position and momentum are much larger than h/2xpi- the very small number that underpins Heisenberg's theory. The Award-winning physicist Georg Gamow wrote a popular book called "Mr Tompkins in Wonderland", where the uncertainty was equal to 1, making everyday phenomena fuzzy. I suspect that J,H&A have read it, and found that combining it with Machiavelli's "The Prince" has made the perfect political textbook.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (not a LAW), is to be replaced by Abbott's Law: the product of all scientific measurement and scientific peer -reviewed publications = C (not the speed of light, but "Crap"). Having thus unhinged the populace from their moderately certain Heisenbergian reality, he promises to offer them a new reality -which is yet to be revealed.

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore".

I don't know how many times or how many commentators forecast the demise of The Nationals Political Party. For sure Bob Katter got out of the Party because he could see no difference between it and the Liberals. Julian McGauran certainly left and is now a Liberal Senator. Others, formerly Nationals left the party for the same reason.
Because I live in a very safe Nationals electorate I discuss that party with all and sundry and the vibes I now get are that we love Saint Barnaby.
He says it as he sees it, not as some green guided politically correct Canberra bred political wowser sees it.
Bravo Barnaby. Lets work to hold the balance of power at the next election. Lets close down the mean minded namby pamby city centric politicians who lust for power rather than real representation of their electorate.

Brian Matthews and certain journos mislead by implying that Barnaby Joyce acts as an Alice in Wonderland. As Barnaby rightly points out, the Government's economic credentials do not stand up to close scrutiny, when its achievements and policies are examined.
Although the PM rightly claims that productivity needs to be improved, the Government does not practise what the PM preaches. The following actions are anti-productivity:
. spending billions of dollars on non-productive assets, such as replacing adequate school classrooms and building Julia Gillard memorial school halls;
. spending/wasting billions of dollars on sub-standard home insulation;
. proposing the scientifically and economically unjustified CPRS which would raise costs substantially thus disadvantaging industries and lowering the standard of living. There is no irrefutable evidence of human-induced global warming;
. implementing recycled pro-union IR laws which drive up production costs;
. sinking $43 billion into a national broadband network which has not been justified by a cost/benefit analysis, and which likely would drive up costs ;
. foregoing $250million of TV broadcast licence revenue, purely for PR reasons

And of course they don't hand out millions to the National party faithful like the WA Nationals do with the deal that gave power to Barnett.
Joyce is the village idiot,Abbott is the court jester where that leaves the bloke defending him I,m not sure,pray tell what percentage of the vote do the Nats get as opposed to the Greens,hopefully in a few more years the Nats will go the way of the DoDo,and get their hand out of the taxpayers pockets

Phoenix 94 & Raycom I support.

Barnaby is a very lonely man , he is not slimy enough and too honest to dance the Bent Canberra dance , he is not capable of slipping the Mickey into the People of Australia ; he has a hard road to hoe but Honesty and Courage and Commitment to his Convictions will in the end Score him well .

People have incredibly short memories , remember John Howardwho had the unenviable challenge of leading our Country out of what we saw then as Bankruptcy ! How silly was that ! Viewed against the quagmire of Debt the Legacy of the Madness of the Rudd Govt no wonder Barnaby appears incoherent sometimes .
There is something about Gold , there is an old saying that goes , you can mistake many things for Gold but you cannot mistake Gold for anything else . Gold always is exciting it has feel it has Luster it is always heaver than expected you know what you have but Millions of Billions of Gazillions are helpless Gamblers Dreams , little wonder Barnaby sounds incoherant as he attempts to explain Dream Time Debt to mere mortals like us .

Joyce runs sovereign debt and private debt together,either deliberately or out of monumental ignorance.
(1)Australia's sovereign debt is very small by OECD standards.

(2)The huge debt referred to by the inimitable Senator is in fact private debt-which hopefully will be used productively- which grew enormously during the Howard government's term,that is hardly the present government's fault.

Sen. Joyce is described as an 'accountant',an economics major was required for accounting courses when I was at business school in the 70s.Perhaps accounting students don't study economics these days.

Perhaps Joyce's Chicken Little routine will influence enough dopey voters to make a difference.