Natalie Joyce just gave a media masterclass

SHE has shown flawless media instinct with her new interview — a stark contrast to the clangers from Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion, his former media adviser, writes Victoria Hannaford.

THERE’S a sorry saga that has played out on screens across the country, provoking fits of rage in many Australians.

No, not the Floptus debacle.

It’s the terrible tale of Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion, wrung out for months, the spectacle a masterclass in how not to manage a crisis in the full glare of the media.

Clanger after clanger have all but made Barnaby Joyce’s position as a politician — even one demoted to the backbench — untenable. What’s more, they have made a mockery of Campion’s former career as a media adviser.

And then there’s Natalie Joyce.

The wronged party in this whole debacle, she has finally given a magazine interview telling her side of the story, after maintaining a dignified silence for the just the right amount of time.

Perfectly managed from a media perspective.

The uncomfortable irony is enough to make you wince.

What’s more, even as the estranged wife of Barnaby, Natalie has tapped into public sentiment by summing up the feelings of many about the whole rigmarole with just three blistering words in her interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly: “An absolute disgrace.”

Until this week, Natalie has wisely kept her own counsel on the affair that saw her marriage of 24 years crumble.

Natalie Joyce appears in the July edition of The Australian’s Women’s Weekly. (Pic: Supplied)

Natalie Joyce has broken her silence to appear in the magazine. (Pic: Paul Suesse/The Australian’s Women’s Weekly)

Contrast that to the manifold missteps of Barnaby and Campion, culminating recently in the interview the couple gave to Sunday Night. The soft interrogation, which came with the quixotic plea for privacy from the couple, was a ratings flop for Channel 7, but delivered a $150,000 payment to Campion and Barnaby — money they have insisted will go into a trust fund for their infant son, Sebastian.

Regardless, the payment caused an uproar, and even Barnaby has admitted to some regret over the paid interview since it aired.

Yet Natalie’s interview goes to pains to point out that she wasn’t paid; an easy win for her and another checkmate when it comes to comparing media relations between the estranged spouses.

More to the point, the interview aired by Channel 7 was cringe-worthy, and did the infamous couple no favours. As Natalie herself articulates: “ … It was all we could do to watch it without throwing a brick at the screen.”

But it’s not just the “optics” — the word beloved of media and public relations professionals — of Barnaby’s actions that have infuriated Australians.

From the bare bones of a forbidden love has sprung an infuriating spectacle and every move seems to have further plunged both Barnaby and Campion into deeper crisis when it comes to their relationship with the public. Not least because their inumberable blunders — everything from claiming their son’s paternity was a “grey area” to asking for privacy while giving interviews — have given insight into the sense of entitlement and delusion that appears to plague this couple.

They have played victim at every turn, and have misunderstood their obligation to the public — something that should be implicit when you are Deputy Prime Minister, a role of which Barnaby has rightfully been divested.

Vikki Campion and Barnaby Joyce gave an interview to Channel 7’s Sunday Night. They were paid $150,000, which they have said will be held in a trust for their son. (Pic: Channel 7)

They have shown themselves completely unaware of why their relationship has sparked outrage and legitimate public interest and scrutiny: ignorant of the questions many still have about use of parliamentary privilege for the time they worked together because of the lack of clarity over when the relationship began; fury at the hypocrisy of Barnaby’s moral grandstanding on issues such as safe zone around abortion clinics, same sex marriage and a cervical cancer vaccine.

Perhaps many Australians were prepared, for a time, to give Campion the benefit of the doubt when it came to her professional record and the legitimacy of holding several highly paid roles as media adviser, but that has certainly changed.

Exhibit A? The last few months.

Because effective media relations are not just about giving off the appearance of doing the right thing, they come from actually doing it: upholding consistent moral standards in your professional and your private lives; treating others with dignity, even in the worst of circumstances.

Anything else, and people will smell a rat.

Most people understand the mess that comes with the end of a marriage. But a clean break should have been made privately by Barnaby with Natalie, and then communicated much sooner and more clearly to the public. There should have been fewer opportunities for accusations of impropriety.

The whole thing has been on the nose.

Meanwhile, Natalie Joyce looks great, she sounds righteous, and she’s finally giving her side of the story — at exactly the right time, with the declaration: “I knew I had to find my voice. They thought that I would lie down, but this time, I couldn’t.”

The only complaint? The magazine missed a trick by not giving Natalie Joyce prime position on their cover, because readers will instantly warm to her wealth of character and common sense.

And if Natalie ever decides to make the move into politics, perhaps the constituents of Tamworth will soon find themselves a new member for New England. She is, after all, a born and bred Tamworth local.

There’s a whiff of insurrection in the air, and it smells glorious.

Victoria Hannaford is a RendezView writer and producer.

@vhannaford