Perhaps the biggest punishment Tanya Plibersek has been subjected to in her role in the Albanese government is the weekly ‘debate’ with Barnaby Joyce on the Seven Network’s breakfast TV show, Sunrise.

Pibersek’s job is to front up on Mondays and sit through Joyce’s take on politics. Joyce is a polarising figure and has been ever since Tony Abbott’s then-chief of staff Peta Credlin, bestowed the mantle of Australia’s ‘best retail politician’ on him, despite Joyce having the charisma of a third-generation used car salesman.

Joyce is on the outs with the Nationals leadership as well (not an unfamiliar territory) and as the SMH recently reported, will be largely contained to his own electorate in the coming election, with David Littleproud putting the kibosh on moonlighting leadership aspirants stepping outside of bounds as unofficial election leaders.

Still though, Plibersek must front up to the cameras with him. Today it kicked off with the Werribee by-election results and Plibersek said:

Oof course you pay attention, but I think one of the interesting things about this result is that there was a significant drop in the Labor vote. Most of it didn’t go to the Liberals, it’s gone to the none of the above category. And of course that’s something that we need to work on. That’s why we are so absolutely focused on taking pressure off cost of living. People know that the real risk to cost of living is Peter Dutton, who wants to slash wages, didn’t support the tax cuts, hasn’t supported electricity bill relief and doesn’t have a single policy that would actually take pressure off families. So, they’re not going to Peter Dutton either.“

And Joyce? Well he just blamed Chris Bowen.

What we’ve seen there, that was about 95 per cent talking points from Tanya, so congratulate her on keeping to the PMO’s lines. But what we’ve seen is if you want to concentrate on peripheral issues such as intermittent power and lose sight of the major issues such as cost of living, then people are not going to vote for you. And in a natural constituency, which you think a lot of times will oscillate between Labor and Green, they voted for neither of them. And what we’ve seen is the Liberal Party have actually won a seat. Now that has got to send a message if it’s like that in that area. Once the further west you go into the suburbs, especially in Sydney, the more pronounced that’s going to be. But you can’t do anything about it because of the dictums of Chris Bowen. I mean, he wants to take you down a path where no one votes for you, and you’ve got no one to blame but yourself for that. And until you decide that your intermittent power, your 82 per cent target, you’re going to save the world ideas are more important than trying to make sure a person can pay for the groceries, pay for their power, pay for their fuel, pay for their rent. Whilst you have the priorities wrong, people are going to change their priorities on how they vote. And it’s happening.”