Interview may haunt Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion

THEY were paid a cool $150,000, but at what cost? Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion’s TV moment will have huge implications for their careers.

OPINION

WHETHER it was the money or the opportunity to tell their side of the story or simply to get the media off their backs, Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion certainly didn’t do anything for their cause with their Sunday Night interview last night.

She’s a media advisor. He’s an experienced politician. Communication and damage limitation is engraved in their job descriptions.

But the show we saw last night was misjudged, ill-prepared, incoherent and lacking a unified message.

Whether Ms Campion insisted they do the interview — and Mr Joyce simply followed (as has been suggested), or both agreed, last night they lacked the clarity, composure and authority to do the jobs for which they’re trained.

Barnaby Joyce has sat through thousands of interviews in his career. He should have known how to prepare for this one. Picture: Marlon Dalton/AAP

Vikki Campion spent many years as a reporter before moving to Canberra to be a political advisor. She would have known the questions to expect, and should have prepared answers with Barnaby. Picture: Adam Taylor

Both have been under unimaginable stress. Ms Campion has recently given birth and with a six-week old they are doubtless sleep-deprived.

But if this was supposed to reposition them in the public eye — which has to have been part of the intent — they have failed miserably.

Both know the media game. Tone is everything and the Sunday Night interview needed to be dignified, considered and cohesive. The pair needed to lead the questioning by driving home an authentic and practised message. They needed to deflect the tricky questions and prosecute a case that showed, at the very least, that they were strong, aligned and quietly in love. For goodness sake, they needed to have talked through together what they might say.

Instead, we’re left thinking that this awful mess has all been for nothing. There was little allegiance between the pair, they were more adversarial than conspiratorial and Joyce’s affection seemed agricultural rather than tender.

The interview was full of moments the two clearly should have prepared for. Picture: Channel 7

Couples fold under far less pressure than these two are under. I’m sure I’m not the only one who doubts they’ll still be together in five years.

Life does not run to neat algorithms and the human heart is both troublesome and unpredictable.

But you can manage your way through a difficult situation with remorse, understanding, patience and care. Instead, Mr Joyce and Ms Campion are like two ball-bearings ricocheting round an arcade game, crashing into each other and creating a lot of friction and noise.

I worry for both of them. Ms Campion is dealing with family issues, the loss of her job, pregnancy, and new motherhood. She is clearly fragile. Mr Joyce looks close to a breakdown. He’s a bloke’s bloke; for a lifetime he’s operated on fact and reason. Now he finds himself in the midst of an emotional firestorm without the skills to dampen the blaze. He can’t even find the right words. To joke that his newborn son has “caused some problems” not only indicates a lack of responsibility, it saddles an innocent infant. And what of his four hurting daughters. Couldn’t he have said how much he loves them; how much they mean to him?

This new family does not need to do photoshoots and interviews. They don’t need to say another word.

Rather, they need to take some of the money they’ve earmarked for their son and use it to pay a good counsellor. Only through deep self-examination, consideration of each other’s points of view, humility and a willingness to grow, will they find peace. And once they’ve achieved that, they may — once again — be fit for work.

Angela Mollard is media commentator and regular contributor to news.com.au. Twitter: @angelamollard