Former federal independent MP Tony Windsor

House of Windsor The re-ascension of National Party leader Barnaby Joyce has shaken former federal independent Tony Windsor out of retirement — not back into running for Parliament, but back to his true calling: hating Barnaby Joyce with the intensity of a thousand suns. It all goes back to an attack ad the Nationals ran against Windsor back in 2016, comparing his conduct with that of a cheating spouse — “running off with Julia” — which Windsor took serious exception to. His response at the time: “Joyce & Treloar shd [sic] withdraw offensive gutter ad inferring philandering with women. These two should be the last to raise this issue.”

His last line raised eyebrows at the time. Anyone curious about what he meant by it needed only to look at his Twitter, where he has been explicitly stating what had long been whispered regarding Joyce’s marriage. But he didn’t stop there, making references (some veiled, some explicit) to various allegations concerning Joyce.

Needless to say, he’s back on it. Windsor has tweeted 11 times (including retweets) since yesterday, and seven of them concern various slams on Joyce; one particularly heavy with allusion:

Most progressive state? Last week, news that Western Australia Police had unapologetically accessed the state’s COVID-19 tracing check-in app prompted a frenzied attempt by WA Attorney-General John Quigley to change the law to prevent that happening again. If such news sent those parochial conservatives in WA into such a state, surely citizens of Victoria, “Australia’s most progressive state“, can rest easy now the problem has been identified? Well, not so much.

Acting Police Minister Danny Pearson is apparently “reluctant” to change the laws regarding police access to QR code check-in data. “For example, let’s suppose a check-in could convict a criminal. I think that the idea of introducing legislation to prevent that occurring would lead to a poor public policy outcome.”

While it should be noted that the budget estimates committee was told that Victoria Police tried to access QR data from the Health Department three times last year but were refused, the disregard for people’s confidence in the safety of their personal information — not to mention in the state that most badly needs people to trust its contact tracing system — is remarkable.

The land of RNod Our first in an occasional series noting RN Breakfast’s sleep-deprived faux pas is an ironic one: this morning Fran Kelly ended an interview on sleep deprivation in the haulage industry, with the sign-off: “And that was drunk driver, er truck driver [name redacted].” Magic stuff. We’ll keep ’em coming as they happen.

A fair day’s pay Scott Morrison is among the best paid leaders in the developed world, pulling down almost $550,000 a year, placing him fifth in the list of comparable leaders. But what’s surprising is that he’s not even nearly the best paid figure associated with government. The latest remuneration tribunal pay lists, registered last month, show some eye-watering amounts. The list is topped by Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chair Wayne Byres, who makes $886,750 a year. In fact you have to go down 22 roles — including the solicitor-general, the public service commissioner and the vice chief of the Defence Force — before you meet anyone on roughly the same pay scale as the PM.

Given the size of the discrepancies, one wonders the difference in the job description forms that means, say, Australian Border Force commissioner Mike Pezzullo gets roughly $60k more than the army’s chief.