Opinion: Barnaby Joyce just reinforced why we hate politicians
BARNABY Joyce checked all the boxes in the “why people hate politicians” index this week, writes Dennis Atkins.
Opinion
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BARNABY Joyce checked all the boxes in the “why people hate politicians” index this week.
Greedy, self serving individuals who are only in it for themselves? Check.
Talking about their own plight without thinking about the concerns of everyday Australians? Check.
Refusing to take any blame or responsibility for anything that goes wrong? Check.
Blaming everyone but themselves? Check.
It’s impossible to match the fall from supposed grace that Joyce – once dubbed the “greatest retail politician in Australia” – has experienced over the past year.
In mid-2017 he was a deputy prime minister who ruled the roost on water policy and infrastructure. He was also top dog in the minor but very influential Coalition partner, the Nationals.
But the seeds of his downfall had been sown. He’d started a messy affair with his media adviser Vikki Campion.
She was shifted from office to office into cushy jobs in a cover-up attempt.
Later Joyce was engulfed in the great dual citizenship debacle of 2017 after he made the truly surprising discovery he’d inherited his father’s New Zealand heritage.
Again, Joyce appeared to skate through – something that’s been a hallmark of his political career where luck has more often than not trumped good management.
However, as 2017 started to draw to a close and Joyce faced a by-election to win back his northern NSW seat of New England (he’d been bounced by the High Court), whispers about his personal life became a drum beat.
The affair with Campion had led to a marriage breakup for Joyce – leaving his wife Natalie and four daughters in the lurch – and the corridor gossip said his new live-in lover was pregnant. After that gossip was confirmed in February, Joyce’s personal and political lives melted down at once.
Within a couple of weeks he was forced to quit as Deputy PM and his relationship with his boss Malcolm Turnbull evaporated after the Prime Minister cut off any hope of a lifeline.
Throughout this downward spiral we were granted first a glimpse and then a complete picture of the real Barnaby Joyce. The scales fell away from the collective eyes of Australians, including most loyal rural and regional voters who thought the Nationals’ leader was their loyal champion.
It was soon apparent he was a self-interested politician who put his own advancement ahead of anything else. For many people, “what does he truly stand for?” was the question they turned to, and the answer most found was not pretty.
During his involuntary banishment to the backbench he was sour and bitter, blaming others for his plight.
He bizarrely told one journalist he wasn’t even sure the baby son Vikki Campion was carrying was his child.
It’s now accepted he is the father of the boy, Sebastian, who was born in April.
Despite pledging he’d be a quiet backbencher who wouldn’t rock the boat or snipe at Turnbull, Joyce soon joined Tony Abbott as an internal and public critic of some government policies, especially anything to do with energy.
When he was discussing his future with Turnbull in February, Joyce told Turnbull he could go to the back bench, join with Abbott and muster the numbers to roll the PM. He later said the comment was in jest. Now Joyce is back, again distracting from the Government’s attempts to sell its Budget and prosecute the case for the company and personal tax cuts.
This weekend Joyce and Campion will be on national television giving a personal interview with Channel 7’s Sunday Night program.
Not only does this “tell all” expose rake over the embers of events from earlier in the year, the fact Joyce and Campion have been paid $150,000 to sit down with journalist Alex Cullen stirred a new well of controversy.
Should a sitting politician get paid for an interview? It seems just about everyone but Joyce say “no”.
Joyce, in typical fashion, shifted the blame by saying it was Campion’s idea because she wanted to cash in on their notoriety. Regardless of whether this is true, Joyce shouldn’t have said it.
We’ve now been teased by a clip from the interview saying “they” wanted her to abort her baby. The “they” aren’t identified but whispers say it refers to members of the Nationals. We’ll have to wait until the interview airs and make up our own minds, but the chances of it being a tacky, self-serving exercise where self-awareness is nowhere to be seen are very high indeed.
Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor
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