If your Christmas was as wild as mine, then you too received a pair of slippers and a luggage tag. But the greatest gift of all came from Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce who uploaded a rambling, 48-second self-shot video to Twitter. If Kylie Minogue’s new tourism video is designed to attract visitors to Australia, then Barnaby’s video is sure to repel them.

Barnaby Joyce delivered a Christmas message via Twitter. Credit:

In the video, Joyce plays the role of an Australian politician slowly losing his grip on reality. He doesn’t appear to be acting, though. It starts gently enough: “You probably wonder what politicians do on Christmas Eve”, offers Joyce, vastly overestimating the public’s interest in the Yuletide activities of our elected officials. “Well, when it’s drought: feed cattle”, continues the former deputy prime minister with a hay straw clinging to his forehead.

From there things escalate rapidly, with Joyce angrily riffing on climate change, government interference and a “higher authority” in the sky. Not since The Blair Witch Project has a shaky, hand-held piece to camera been so unnerving. If Joyce had gotten any louder or more intense, he would have made a Bob Katter press conference look like an ASMR video. The cows didn’t seem particularly spooked, though, as even they’ve probably grown tired of the guy. “I just don’t want the government any more in my life. I’m sick of the government being in my life”, bemoans Barnaby, a man who I’m sure many would like to see as far away from government as possible.

On the topic of climate change, he seems to accept the reality of it but states that his problem has always been “whether you believe a new tax is gonna change it back”. Railing against the government and a new tax to tackle climate change seems a little odd, unless of course Barnaby has travelled back in time to 2011 and sent the video from there, which at this point is the most logical explanation I can find for the whole exercise.