Kate Langbroek is right about single women

THE messy saga of Barnaby Joyce offers many lessons to public figures, but one for single women too. As Kate Langbroek says, stay away from married men, writes Karen Brooks.

WHEN Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce’s affair with his former staffer, Vikki Campion, was made public last week, it dominated news cycles and started interesting conversations about public versus private lives, politicians, trust, morality, innocence and guilt.

But it took radio personality, Kate Langbroek, to raise another matter: the role of the “mistress” — a mature, professional and single woman — in the affair.

Discussing this with her co-host, David Hughes, Langbroek said: “Maybe I say this because I am a woman,” she began. “Don’t get me wrong, I totally hold Barnaby Joyce to account for his own actions — but I’m not a man — so all I can speak for is on behalf of myself as a woman and to other women: Stop f***ing married men. Just don’t do it.”

She went on to describe how Campion might be “getting a baby — but (she’s) also getting so much pain and misery and bad juju.”

Spared much of the “pain” to date as Joyce is forced to answer the shambles his private life has become (along with his hurting wife), Campion has had her pregnant image splashed on the front page of major newspapers including The Courier-Mail and The Daily Telegraph, name dragged through the press and court of public opinion, and her estranged father interviewed on tabloid television.

Kate Langbroek was on air with Dave Hughes when she took aim at women who sleep with married men. (Pic: Paul Jeffers)

Small consequences for what the affair has cost Joyce’s family and the way in which its revelation has undermined his political persona.

One politician even went so far as to align her with the unborn baby and Joyce’s wife and daughters.

Excuse me?

Joyce also sought to protect Campion from judgment. Conveniently forgetting his family (so useful on the hustings in the past), were once more being dragged into a saga not of their making, Joyce rather disingenuously commented to Leigh Sales on 7.30, not only that he was “hurt” his private life had spilt into the public arena (try thinking about your wife and kids and how they feel), but that he didn’t see how an image of a pregnant woman was newsworthy.

On its own, possibly not. But when this woman was impregnated by the married Deputy PM and while she was being paid from the taxpayer’s purse to help ministers deliver policy, maintain their public profiles etc, it’s not only newsworthy but a matter of civic interest.

A pregnant Vikki Campion pictured in Canberra. (Pic: John Grainger)

Add to that news broken late last week that Resources Minister Matt Canavan created a specific role for her in his office, and we have another problematic headline.

Campion is an adult and a professional who, as Natalie Joyce implies, was welcomed, as a staffer, into the family home. She knowingly embarked on an affair with a married man with four daughters who was also her boss and a powerful politician.

The old saying, “it takes two to tango” resonates here. Yet, likely because she’s pregnant, she’s been afforded space.

Campion, like many women of her age (33) and ability, would have embarked on this affair with her eyes wide open — as a consenting adult. She’s no victim. And, as much as I ache for Natalie and the Joyce’s daughters, I’m relieved she’s not being painted in the usual misogynistic way as either manipulative or victim.

But what’s occurred does raise issues of employers, employees, particularly when both are funded by the public purse. The suggestion to ban sexual relations between parliamentary staff, apropos the US is, however, a step too far.

Nevertheless, no-one is suggesting anyone should remain in a relationship that makes them and others unhappy; though there are ways of releasing yourself from marital bonds with dignity and respect for your partner, family and self, sparing as much heartache and humiliation as possible.

This expectation is increased when you not only live a very public life but when, as a social and moral shorthand, a way of portraying your values and ethics, you use the very family you now abandon.

To be crass, trade your wife in for a younger model.

Worse, when you use family to deny equal rights to others, as Barnaby did during the SSM campaign.

Joyce might be a hypocrite, but the outing of his affair comes against a background of increasing distrust and disillusionment with politics and politicians, as the Edelman Trust Barometer Report revealed last week.

Spared a degree of consequence for now, what Campion no doubt will face once the baby is born is a great deal of potentially painful public scrutiny and commentary.

The lesson here is simple — if, as a public figure, you want to keep your private life out of the headlines, don’t take your professional one home.

For single women: what Kate said.

Dr Karen Brooks is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow, IASH, University of Queensland.

Originally published as Kate Langbroek is right about single women