Further allegations emerge of a boozy Barnaby Joyce after ‘bottom-pinch’ claim

ANOTHER woman has said she witnessed an inebriated “loud” and “obnoxious” Nat­ional Party leader Barnaby Joyce the night he allegedly pinched a woman’s bottom after a 2011 awards ceremony.

• Pressure on ‘untenable’ Joyce over scandal

ANOTHER woman has said she witnessed an inebriated “loud” and “obnoxious” Nat­ional Party leader Barnaby Joyce the night he allegedly pinched a woman’s bottom after a 2011 awards ceremony.

The former Rural Women’s Agricultural Awards winner claims she was at the event after-party at a bar in Canberra where she chatted to a slurring Joyce, who made her feel so “uncomfortable” she left.

The Deputy Prime Minister, who was in Opposition at the time, has emphatically ­denied attending the RWAA after-party at a bar in the city’s main thoroughfare on Northbourne Ave, where another woman claims Joyce pinched her on the bottom, saying the allegations were peddled by political enemies and “did not happen”.

A woman alleged Barnaby Joyce ‘drunkenly’ pinched her bottom in 2011. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Sally Cray with PM Malcolm Turnbull at the G20 meeting in Germany, July 2017.

The second woman, who asked not to be named, told The Daily Telegraph: “I stake my children’s lives on it that Barnaby was at the after-party that night, I remember it and him because he was so crass.

RELATED: Joyce ally says Deputy PM under pressure

MORE: Former MP Sam Dastyari dishes dirt on sex in politics

“He was loud and obnox­ious and very drunk — there was no point in me networking, or discussing policy initiatives with him, because he was in no fit state, it was definitely party time.”

Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion in pictures

VIEW GALLERY

Yesterday, Mr Joyce denied claims from another woman that he pinched her derrière that evening — an allegation also rejected by the MP and Prime Minister’s office when it was raised four years later.

Pressure point ... PM Malcolm Turnbull and Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce in Question Time yesterday. Picture: Kym Smith

Outside Parliament yesterday, Mr Joyce said: “This is a story that has been brought about by a person unnamed, at a venue unnamed, at a time unnamed, seven years ago, and has been peddled by the bitterest of political enemies to me.”

The claim was backed by John Clements, a former staffer for Mr Joyce’s rival Tony Windsor, who raised the ­alleged incident with Mr Turnbull’s senior adviser, Sally Cray, in December 2015.

It is understood that after Ms Cray looked into the matter it was clear no one had made a complaint.