Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce interrupted by loud bird on air

Barnaby Joyce had to tell some noisy wildlife to keep it down during a live cross on national television.

Barnaby Joyce had to pull out his angry voice live on TV to tell some noisy wildlife to keep it down while he was doing an interview with Sky News Australia from his Danglemah property.

The opposition veterans’ affairs spokesman was discussing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to the Cook Islands when the bird kicked up a ruckus, forcing Mr Joyce to stop and tell it to “be quiet”.

Mr Joyce was continuing to power on through the interview when Sky News host Peter Stefanovic brought the noisy critter up.

“You’ve got a magpie there Barnaby?” he asked

Mr Joyce quickly pointed out Stefanovic’s lack of skill in identifying bird sounds.

“It’s a sort of currawong thing, it goes into the bottlebrush,” he said. “I’ll tell it to be quiet.

“Be quiet!”

The noisy species in question, a grey currawong. Picture: File

The pair attempted to continue the interview, getting into the important topic of is Mr Joyce a better dancer than Mr Albanese, but the bird wouldn’t keep quiet, forcing them to soon wrap up.

Serious topics were covered in the four-minute interview though, including Remembrance Day, coal exports and the recent Optus blackout.

Mr Joyce, commenting on the latter, said “transparency” was needed from the telco on what had caused the issues and the offer of free data wasn’t good enough.

“How did this happen? What went wrong?” he asked. “We all know the phones went down, we all know people couldn’t transact and shops couldn’t make money.

“They are going to send them $100 worth of data. That won’t even touch the sides of what a lot of shops have lost during the day.”