There was one thing missing from Sunday nights cash-encrusted TV adventure with little Sebastian, Vikki Campion and this controversial family's innocent baby, Barnaby Joyce.
A lullaby.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are?
How we wonder, indeed.
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Here we had a newborn star – Sebastian – and we were left wondering what on Earth this unwilling celebrity will make of it all once he is old enough to cash in the lusty $150,000 trust fund so generously and ethically provided by his parents and the chequebook-laden storytellers at Channel Seven.
Sebastian's mum and dad were at times moving, emotional, blunt, crass, and sometimes at cross-purposes.
For example, Vikki's grey areas, vis a vis Sebastians paternity, weren't necessarily Barnaby's grey areas.
For the viewer, it was a kaleidoscope of awkward horrors.
Barnaby, heroically drowning in the grey areas as he dealt with his public questioning of own fatherhood: "It was a tipping point, and there were so many people who were close to me who said, 'What on Earth possessed you to say that?'"
Interviewer Alex Cullen: "Well, a lot of people thought, 'Gee, way to throw your partner under the bus'."
Barnaby, scoffing at on-coming buses – including the one driven by the partner sitting right next to him: "Yeah, well, it was actually a decision we made together. And we were trying … we were just trying to … I didn't use the words 'grey area'."
Cullen: "I get the sense that you weren't too happy about it, Vikki?"
Campion: "I was deeply hurt by the 'grey area' headline. Definitely."
At another point, Joyce attempted to assert his role as "the adult" in this awful situation.
Campion shot back: "Im an adult, too."
Vikki Campion and Barnaby Joyce.
Photo: Seven News
Yes, viewers, you didnt have to watch Masterchef to see a beetroot roasted on Sunday night. It was rough at times. And it was, if we may coin a new adjective, Barnabian – as the couple traversed the terrible territory they and we have endured over recent months.
Joyce was keen to resurrect his public standing by confirming that his every utterance on this matter prior to February was … a grey area. He noted that he knew he was doomed once he learned of the pregnancy: "I knew the day would come where Id have to step down."
He neglected to wave in sorrow at the confused voters of New England as he so confessed.
And he was keen to make clear that his esteemed colleagues – these being the colleagues on his own side of the parliament – are a nest of vipers.
How awful are they?
This awful: they pressured Campion to abort the baby.
To use Joyce's words: "That's the absolute scum of the earth…"
A "mad boarding school", he called the parliament, a "dark and horrible" place. The kind of place where his partner would be made to feel that "woman, you will do this if you want a career in this place".
"And that's your Australian parliament."
And so it went. The nation swooned, such that viewers felt like singing another lullaby, especially when Seven's cameras captured the former deputy prime minister walking his newborn around the house.
Of Representatives.
Seven certainly got it's money's worth.
But at no point did Barnaby answer questions about parliamentary entitlements and other pressing matters. It was left to us, the voters and viewers, to fill in the blanks, and to find the appropriate lullaby on which to end the evening.
Hey, diddle, diddle
The cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
The little dog laughed
To see such sport
And the dish ran away with the spoon
And they all lived unhappily ever after.
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