Andrew Bolt: Barnaby Joyce’s affair with his former staffer is our business
BARNABY Joyce’s private life is a public matter because of the arguments he used against same-sex marriage, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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SORRY, but Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has made his affair with his media adviser our business, too. That is not to damn him but to state a fact.
JOYCE’S COLLEAGUES SLAM HIS BEHAVIOUR OVER LOVE CHILD SAGA
WHAT BARNABY REFUSES TO ANSWER
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER BARNABY JOYCE’S BIG CHALLENGE
Joyce has left his wife and four daughters and is now expecting a child with former staffer Vikki Campion, 33.
Good luck to them and normally a politician’s private life should be just that.
But Joyce himself made the private public not just by campaigning for family values, but by the way he argued against legalising same-sex marriage.
First, he claimed it would hurt us when doing business with Asia.
“When we go there, there are judgments, whether you like it or not, that are made about us and they see in how we negotiate with them whether they see us as — whether they see us as decadent.”
And gay marriage would “in some instances” be judged as “decadence”.
Really? Well, if such considerations are important in making law, they must also be considerations in choosing our lawmakers.
Wouldn’t those Asian leaders also judge it decadent for a deputy prime minister to leave his family for his staffer? Some voters might.
Second, Joyce cited the happiness of his daughters as an argument against gay marriage.
“The best protection for those girls is that they get themselves into a secure relationship with a loving husband and I want that to happen for them.
“I don’t want any legislator to take that right away from me.”
Could any voter take that seriously if they’d known Joyce had blown up his own “secure relationship” and — said his wife on Wednesday — at the cost of the happiness of those daughters?
Third strike: Joyce also made his affair the business of voters by involving taxpayers’ money.
Campion may be an excellent staffer, but it looks bad that she was immediately hired by Nationals minister Matt Canavan when she quit working for their mutual boss last year.
Worse, she was then hired by yet another Nationals MP, Damian Drum, after Canavan quit over doubts about his citizenship.
Don’t taxpayers deserve to know when MPs’ lovers are hired on taxpayers’ money?
So Joyce’s affair is our business, even though most voters will forgive him or dismiss the story as irrelevant.
But that raises another question: so why didn’t Canberra journalists report this open secret before the Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson did on Wednesday?
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