Barnaby Joyce, Llew O’Brien harassed by ‘Irish backpackers’ at Canberra pub

Barnaby Joyce was forced to stage a strategic retreat from a Canberra pub after he said he was harassed by “Irish backpackers”.

Barnaby Joyce and the Deputy Speaker Llew O’Brien were forced to stage a strategic retreat from a Canberra pub on Sunday night after the pair said they were harassed by “Irish backpackers”.

The former deputy prime minister and his friend Mr O’Brien, a former Queensland cop, deny being thrown out of the pub.

However, the pair have revealed they were forced to make a swift exit before matters escalated with a group of “loud” Irish backpackers.

“No, no, it was certainly nothing to do with me,” Mr Joyce told news.com.au.

“Someone was being rude to Llew. What happened (was) there were Irish backpackers and they were being loud and I thought, ‘Let’s get out of here’.”

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Barnaby Joyce and Deputy Speaker Llew O’Brien were forced to stage a strategic retreat from the pub on Sunday night. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

The two denied they were thrown out of the pub.

Asked why the backpackers were being rude to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Joyce replied, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Bye!”

But Mr O’Brien revealed the fight started over whether or not the Mike Tyson’s comeback fight against Roy Jones Jnr on Sunday night was the worst fight in the history of boxing.

“It was just a garden variety, bit of a verbal joust,’’ Mr O’Brien said.

“We were having a fight about the fight.”

“We were going anyway. We left. They were just drunk. And the staff were very professional and so we left and went to dinner.

Mr O’Brien said he would not repeat the abuse the Irishman had hurled at him over Tyson’s performance.

“When he started with the insults I gave it back to him and then we left. Barnaby had just arrived and we just went.

“The staff saw things heating up and that was it, we were going.”

The 54-year-old former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who owns a 40-acre marijuana farm, revealed this week after the fight that he smokes marijuana “every day”

It’s not the first time that Mr Joyce has run into colourful characters in pubs. Three years ago, he called in the Australian Federal Police after he knocked a man’s hat from his head after accusing the individual of “stalking” him during a by-election.

According to the local newspaper The Northern Daily Leader, the exchange took place at the Graman Hotel near Inverell when Mr Joyce was confronted with accusations about “family matters”.

The Civic Pub in Braddon confirmed there was a fresh incident on Sunday night but a barman who spoke to news.com.au said he wasn’t completely across the details but offered to get in touch with staff who were on duty at the time.

The Braddon pub, situated in Londsdale St, is just a two-minute walk from Canberra’s famous “rainbow roundabout”, which was painted in rainbow colours to celebrate the passage of same sex marriage laws.

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The Civic Pub in Braddon, where Mr Joyce and Mr O’Brien were on Sunday night. Picture: Google Maps

The pub is situated just a two-minute walk from Canberra’s famous “rainbow roundabout”. Picture: act.gov.au

It’s also walking distance to the Braddon apartment once owned by Mr Joyce’s partner Vicki Campion, his former press secretary, who was famously photographed outside the inner-city home by The Daily Telegraph while secretly pregnant with his child.

The photographs sparked international headlines after it was revealed the deputy prime minister had left his wife, fallen in love with his former press secretary and was expecting a baby.

His mate, renegade Nationals MP Llew O’Brien, was elected Deputy Speaker in February after quitting the Nationals’ party room following a clash with leader Michael McCormack.

He then accepted Labor’s nomination for Deputy Speaker in an attempt to deny the government’s endorsed candidate, the Victorian MP Damian Drum.

In a secret ballot of MPs in the House of Representatives, Nationals MPs defected to vote for Mr O’Brien in a ballot he won by 75 votes to 67.