No excuse for stealing another woman’s husband

WHAT Natalie Joyce said to Vikki Campion may have been uncivil, but it wasn’t wrong. It doesn’t let Barnaby off the hook to say Vikki Campion was a homewrecker, writes Miranda Devine.

NOW we know exactly what Natalie Joyce said to her husband’s mistress in an epic confrontation on the streets of Tamworth — and, while it wasn’t polite, it was what every wronged wife needs to say.

In her first on-the-record (unpaid) interview since the breakdown of her 24-year marriage to the ­former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, Natalie has described how she ­accosted her husband and his staffer Vikki Campion outside his electorate office in Tamworth last March.

“I was very measured and made sure I didn’t raise my voice,” Natalie told the Australian Women’s Weekly. “She and Barney were smoking outside. He bolted when he saw me, I turned to her and said: ‘My husband is out of bounds, off limits, he’s a married man with four children,’ and then I called her a ‘home-wrecking whore’. It was not one of my finer moments but, looking back, I’m proud I stood up to her.”

There would hardly be a woman in Australia who wouldn’t applaud Natalie Joyce for standing up to fight for her marriage.

Swearing aside, she was right. Vikki was a homewrecker, as is every woman who goes after a married man. Feminist websites may ­encourage sleeping with other women’s husbands as an empowering act, but it is the ultimate in unsisterly behaviour.

A 2016 post on Barnaby Joyce’s Instagram account, with Natalie and his daughters, to mark International Women’s Day.

Vikki, 33, couldn’t use the excuse that she didn’t know Barnaby was married. Everyone in Australia knew, since Barnaby was one of the few remaining “family values” politicians whose photogenic wife and four daughters, Bridgette, 21, Julia, 20, Caroline, 18, and Odette, 15, have played an integral part in his election campaigns.

At the last election, he posted on Facebook two images of Natalie and the girls, one taken in 2005 when he first joined Parliament, and they were aged between two and nine, and the other a re-enactment in the same parliamentary courtyard 10 years later. “Couldn’t have done it without them,” he wrote on July 2, 2016. “Couldn’t do it without them now. Whatever happens today, I’m so grateful to have my family.”

The sentiment didn’t last.

Last December, after citizenship problems forced him to recontest a by-election and win back his seat of New England, and when, unknown to the electorate, Vikki was five months pregnant, his office asked Natalie if he could use that family photo on Christmas cards to constituents. She told them where to go.

But last Thursday, at the North Sydney funeral for Barnaby’s brother Tim, 42, who had died of cancer, leaving three children under eight, Natalie threw her arms around her estranged husband and they hugged for dear life.

Friends say she’s over him, but she was glad he finally had dinner that night with their daughters — the first time he has seen them since his son with Vikki, Sebastian, was born nine weeks ago.

The girls have been very angry with their father, especially after the tell-all interview he and Vikki did with Channel 7 three weeks ago, during which he refused to answer their calls.

He’s already missed a 21st, an 18th, an HSC, and her 48th birthday, but Natalie wants her daughters to have “a loving relationship with their father. The door will be open for him any time he needs us.”

She is a class act.

Barnaby Joyce, enjoys a coffee with Natalie and dog Misty after winning his New England seat in 2016. Natalie Joyce says Vikki Campion was relentless in her pursuit of her husband. (Pic: Dan Himbrechts/AAP)

This is not to excuse the cheating husband. He broke his marriage vows and betrayed his wife. He is the one who will miss out on the golden grandparent years when family life pays dividends.

But Vikki could have walked away after Natalie confronted her in March. After that, she could no longer pretend she wasn’t aware of the pain she was causing his family. She wasn’t yet pregnant. Sebastian’s conception was three months in the future. She could have done the right thing.

Instead she doubled down. She pursued Barnaby, 51, with text messages and phone calls whenever he was out of her sight.

When he and Natalie went to ­Europe last June 23 to give their marriage “one last shot”, Vikki bombarded Barnaby with calls, despite his promise that he’d have no contact with Vikki for two weeks.

“She was relentless and called him maybe 20 times a day”, ­Natalie says.

Within weeks of his return from Europe, Vikki was pregnant with Barnaby’s son.

The marriage was over.

Vikki had won. And, make no mistake, it was a contest.

Natalie says Vikki, who joined Barnaby’s staff during the July 2016 election campaign, entered her family like a “wrecking ball (and) stole my life”.

“She wanted my life from the get-go. This was a whole lot more than a fleeting office romance. The first day I met her, back in 2016, she was so cold …,” Natalie says.

“Then, after watching them at the Nationals Christmas party later that year, I had a feeling they were having an affair.”

Natalie rejects the “ridiculous suggestion of ours being a loveless marriage … nothing could be more wrong”.

One thing is for sure, no one buys the Mills and Boon explanation Vikki gave Seven’s Sunday Night program in the interview three weeks ago, for which she was paid $150,000. “I couldn’t help it,” Vikki said. “You can’t help who you fall in love with”.

Of course you can. Controlling our sexual passions is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

If we really can’t help who we fall in love with, people would be rutting on desks all over Australia.

The step before falling in love is a conscious choice and let’s not pretend that women who make that choice with a married man don’t know exactly what they’re doing.

They have transgressed the ­female code that says other women’s husbands are off limits

It is a rotten thing to do, and good on Natalie Joyce for saying so.