Boos for Barnaby on national TV

Barnaby Joyce has faced boos from a hostile ABC crowd when speaking about why he opposes the Voice to parliament.

A member of the public questioned Mr Joyce as well as filmmaker Rachel Perkins and independent MP Kate Chaney about whether Australia was “mature” enough to hold a referendum about the Voice to parliament.

Mr Joyce described the upcoming referendum as “probably one of the most divisive things that has come into my area in political history” on the QandA on Monday night.

“You’re asking two people who were born in the same hospital, went to the same primary school, went to the same high school, living in two houses beside one another in a regional town. That one apparently one has access to two fields in the federal parliament and one has access to one,” he said.

As the former Deputy Prime Minister was finishing his answer, he was cut off by boos from the audience.

Host Patricia Karvellas jumped in to subdue the crowd, asking them to be “respectful” to Mr Joyce’s answer.

“When other people out there hear [that], it just resonates why they’re angry,” he finished.

Ms Karvellas then went on to ask Mr Joyce if whether Voice is valid as the Constitution rules that specific laws can be made for Aboriginal people.

“But even those laws, PK, are brought forward by a parliament elected by all Australians …” he said, before being interrupted by Ms Chaney.

The pair went on to argue and speak over each other about the legality of the proposed Voice and whether it would be taken to the High Court for half a minute.

“Of course, you can’t say it won’t go to the High Court because we want the rule of law to apply to everything. We don’t carve things out and say the rule of law rule doesn’t apply to that,” Ms Chaney argued.

As Mr Joyce was gearing up to respond, Ms Karvellas cut off the bickering pair, moving onto the next topic.