Joyce’s TV appearance just made things worse

BARNABY Joyce’s awkward TV appearance somehow managed to betray both the women in his life, and begs the question, why did he even agree to it, writes Wendy Tuohy.

RADIO host Jon Faine observed that after Barnaby Joyce did his car crash 7.30 interview last night, the Deputy PM probably “slept on the couch” when he got home last night.

Faine has a point: in his stilted and under-prepared appearance, the Nationals leader managed to betray not just one woman but two.

The only direct mention Joyce made of his new partner, the young former staffer who has been catapulted onto the front pages because she hooked up with Joyce and became pregnant with his child, was as “a pregnant lady walking across the road”.

His comment about Vikki Campion could not have been more impersonal; it was as if “the pregnant woman” were just a bystander to Joyce’s own, distressing personal drama or a witness to a scene in which he was being persecuted.

For her devotion to Joyce, heavily pregnant Campion received scant acknowledgement of her place in her partner’s life, other than being roped in to his self-described “greatest failing in my life” — the collapse of his long marriage.

Barnaby Joyce refused to say anything about his personal life on 7.30, other than he wanted it to remain private. (Pic: ABC)

She may be just about due, out on a limb and the subject to the kind of scorching national attention that would reduce most of us to a screaming heap, but there was no shred of love or support evident in Joyce’s comments about his 33 year-old partner.

His references to his wife of 24 years, Natalie, were just as paltry — and lame.

Joyce did not even grant a transparent answer to the claim made by the widely-respected woman who had four daughters with him that he had, in fact, started his affair while Campion was working in his office.

It would not have killed Joyce to have offered his wife that small validation of her experience, even when asked directly if it were so by interviewer Leigh Sales.

Sales’ question was put in the context of the wider issue of whether any public funds were involved in fostering the budding relationship, but it also opened up the chance for the moralising anti marriage-equality activist to be sincerely remorseful about the damage done, and transparent with his voters.

Barnaby and Natalie Joyce with their daughters Odette, Caroline, Julia and Bridgette. (Pic: Facebook)

Perhaps he was so stunned the unspoken agreement that private lives of parliamentarians are off limits to media that he was unable to think clearly enough to compose thoughtful answers. That is the kind take on it. But were he that scattered — and unwilling to actually address the issue half the country is talking about — why go on air at all?

Another interpretation is that he felt entitled to make the story all about him, and comfortable with sidelining both women (and daughters) whose lives have been turned upside down this week.

Australians are a forgiving mob, and many of us do “fail” at marriage, as Barnaby Joyce pointed out. But we also have a fine tuned antenna for respectful treatment, or otherwise, of people in precarious situations through no fault of their own.

Barnaby Joyce is not an underdog in this marital/parental mess, he is the key player and he has had the lion’s share of power in the situation he has put two women (and four, soon-to-be five, kids) in.

His woeful performance is a warning to anyone in public life who thinks he/she only needs to say “it’s not fair/poor me” and all the scrutiny over a drama of one’s own making will go away.

It is fair that viewers and commentators are coming down hard on Joyce, and unless he makes a much better go of being honest, open and most importantly humble about what he has orchestrated, the heat will not be turned down.

In the meantime, I do hope he has a comfortable couch.