History was made in Canberra this morning when a new Sorry Day – to be known as Sorry Day II – joined Australia’s national calendar of events.

On 13 February 2008 the then prime minister Kevin Rudd addressed the Australian Parliament to issue a national apology to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The historic apology has been marked and remembered annually ever since as Sorry Day.

This morning a speech in the Great Hall of Parliament House marked the advent of Sorry Day II.

In her landmark address, president of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, ABC reporter Jane Norman, (main picture) apologised to all Australians on behalf of the gallery’s nearly 200 members for ever labelling Barnaby Joyce as “the greatest retail politician in the nation”.

Ms Norman began her speech by recognising the widespread application over many years by gallery members of the description of the former deputy prime minister and former National Party leader despite the mountain of easily available evidence to the contrary.

“The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future,” she continued.

“We apologise for ever referencing Barnaby Joyce as ‘the greatest retail politician in the nation’.

“We now take this opportunity to acknowledge the truth – that he is and always has been a bloated, ideas-free, right-wing, pissed-up, red-faced blowhard.  

“We the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

“We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

“A future where this Parliament Press Gallery resolves that the injustices of the past – namely elevating Barnaby Joyce beyond his actual status as a literally staggering, loudmouth, yokel in a big hat – must never, never happen again,” Ms Norman concluded to wild applause.

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