Dominion implies care, responsibility, care for the future, love. Domination implies exploitation and extraction, fire and drought, pestilence, catastrophe, ruin. Because this has long been your strategy I was shocked when our town voted you in, last election. Next time, depending on your decision now, it may not.

For years you’ve actively promoted policies that propel us into the pyrocene. When Braidwood was almost overrun by fire last December, when the paddocks were burning, when flames licked the town and my neighbours were out there with hoses, when we spent months surrounded by smoke so thick we could barely see the sheep mewing over the fence, you didn’t say – let’s stop burning coal. Let’s pursue solar. Your best shot was to call – distantly, from London – to ban the Sydney fireworks.

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Then, as Berejiklian’s anointed to lead the recovery, you blamed the apocalyptic fires on green ideology; on a supposed “locking up” of national parks and a service you described as “ideologically opposed” to hazard reduction.

Seriously, John? I mean, there’s the obvious absurdity of blaming a government agency, whose failures of policy or ideology are unavoidably your failures. But there’s also the fact that if hazard build-up occurred it did so at the same time as your government was cutting budgets and staff. Over the Coalition’s nine-year reign, you’ve reduced ranger numbers by more than a quarter (from 261 to 193) and abolished the senior ranger role altogether.

The hypocrisy here is many-layered, from your federal colleagues' persistent refusal to heed the pleas and warnings of former fire chiefs to the fact that the fires’ unprecedented ferocity, hot enough to melt engine blocks, was intensified by the coal policies you shamelessly promote.

Plus, after nine years in government, to blame green ideology is to blame the opposition. How weak is that?

In a continent already heading for desertification, your government has deliberately legislated to make land clearing easier. Last year, according to your own Natural Resources Commission report, last year’s land clearing approvals were 14 times the average from before the cynically named Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 came in, and offsets were far less than required.

This year, as even the Arctic burned, your government has affirmed and reaffirmed its commitment to coal and approved Santos’ $3.6 billion CSG mine in the Pilliga, which stands to pollute the ancient and irreplaceable waters of the Great Artesian Basin.

That’s before we even get to KoalaGate. At one level, of course, it seems merely ill-advised. Your preparedness to risk everything for the right to destroy koala habitat looks like very bad politics.

Because, John, farmers don’t hate koalas. Which makes it strange that you’d go to the wall on this issue, especially so publicly, when Planning Minister Rob Stokes had already offered you all those concessions. Honestly? It smacks of another agenda.

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Three things support this construction. One, that the koala habitat protection policy doesn’t even apply to normal farm-type land clearing for cropping or grazing but only if you want development consent. Two, that the new policy isn’t actually that big a change, and still involves way too much self-assessment.

Three, that the policy’s only formal objector was developer Jeff McCloy. McCloy, you recall, was the one who complained of feeling “like an ATM” handing out envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars to political candidates – but was still so strongly in favour of developer political donations that he defended the practice all the way to the High Court (and lost).

And speaking of dubious friends, John, I’m a little concerned about your decision to sign off on a $3.3 million government investment in an oyster farm chaired by a mate, and to lie about it – nine times, apparently – to a parliamentary committee. That your investment adviser in this was a company, ROC Partners, that sent another $3.3 million of our money to itself via a Wagyu beef business in which it was a shareholder also bothers me.

Farmers are very trusting people, on the whole. They love their land and are not looking to sell for a quick buck. They’re also loyal. Far too loyal, when it comes to voting National. But to be conservative, you actually have to conserve something.

Already your vote is threatened by the Greens in the north and the Shooters out west. As more #wfh city-types move to the regions, this threat can only intensify. Your exploitative message will be progressively harder to sell.

So which is it to be, John? Dominion or domination? Your choice but, if it’s domination, sorry. We can’t be friends.

This column was written before John Barilaro announced he was taking mental health leave.