Politics

Quarantine-breaching star gets last laugh with Barnaby Joyce

Aug 15, 2017

The actor was delighted to hit back over Joyce's embarrassing citizenship dilemma.

Since 2015, Barnaby Joyce has been involved in a feud with Amber Heard and her former husband, Johnny Depp. The two actors were found guilty of bypassing strict quarantine laws and illegally bringing their two Yorkie dogs, Pistol and Boo, to Australia.

The latest insult has been let fly by Heard on Twitter after Joyce was found to be a New Zealand citizen, jeopardising his own parliamentary career.

“When Barnaby Joyce said ‘no one is above the law’ I didn’t think he meant New Zealand law …” Heard posted to Twitter on August 15.

https://twitter.com/realamberheard/status/897239776402620417

She followed up the tweet an hour later with a photo of New Zealand kiwi fruit.

https://twitter.com/realamberheard/status/897254836697157632

“To comfort Mr. Joyce in his hour [of] need, I have sent him a box of New Zealand’s finest kiwi fruit (assuming this passes his biosecurity laws),” she joked.

Joyce threatened to euthanase the two dogs in 2015 if they weren’t removed from the country, and many believed he was taking things a step too far.

“No, it’s not,” Joy said. “The law is the same for everybody. There is no preferential treatment here. You come into our nation, you have to abide [by] biosecurity protocols.”

While Heard managed to avoid jail time over the incident by pleading guilty for falsifying border protection documents, it seemed no one could let sleeping dogs lie.

After Depp and Heard posted an excruciatingly-awkward apology video on the subject, Joyce criticised Depp’s acting abilities.

“Even I could have done a little bit better than that. Do it again, Johnny. Do it with gusto. Rise to the camera, old trout, rise to the camera,” Joyce said in an interview on Sunrise.

Depp also accused Joyce of looking like “inbred with a tomato”, and Joyce hit back with a photo of himself holding a bunch of tomatoes.

“Just catching up with a bag full of cousins at Bingara,” the deputy prime minister posted.

After prime minister Malcolm Turnbull accused the Greens of “incredible sloppiness” over the first dual citizenship issues, he has stood by his deputy, declaring that Joyce is “qualified to sit in the house and the High Court will so hold”.

If the High Court does not so hold, let’s hope Joyce enjoys the shipment of kiwi fruit as a consolation prize to his career.