Barnaby Joyce quits alcohol, loses 15kg after infamous night he barely remembers

The morning after a drunken Barnaby Joyce was embarrassed by a video of him sprawled on a Canberra footpath swearing into his phone going viral, he decided to get off the grog.

He said he hasn’t had a sip since. He and wife Vikki Campion have stopped storing alcohol. Colleagues said the firebrand has never been sharper. And he has lost 15 kilograms, partly by runs through Canberra’s northern suburbs and playing touch footy.

Portrait of Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Barnaby Joyce, at Parliament House in Canberra.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

In the 57-year-old’s first interview reflecting on the incident he described as a low point in his life, Joyce said he realised he needed to change for his family and career.

“Big swathes of the night I don’t remember. And that’s never, ever happened to me before. And I never, ever want it to happen again,” he said from his Canberra office.

“I disgraced myself and I just woke up the next morning and said ‘that’ll do’, so I didn’t have another drink.”

The twice former deputy prime minister has been told by someone who closely inspected the video that his phone was upside-down. He may have been mumbling obscenities with nobody on the other end of the line.

Joyce has previously spoken about mental health troubles and having combined alcohol with medication on the night in February. But he insists he is not an alcoholic.

“If I was, it would have been impossible [to quit], I would have been desperately looking around [for a drink]. I just literally woke up one morning and said ‘that’s it’,” Joyce said.

“People around me said ‘you never really got shitfaced, you’d have a couple of drinks and stop’. But that night I did.”

Insisting he is “not a wowser”, Joyce had not ruled out drinking in the future.

“Maybe at some stage I’ll have a beer again, but at the moment, nah,” he said.

Several National Party MPs, speaking anonymously so they could be frank, said Joyce had been more disciplined since Coalition leaders David Littleproud and Peter Dutton asked him to take leave to clear his head after the video’s release.

Critics had previously accused Joyce of running a destabilisation campaign against Littleproud, who maintains internal critics and was recently forced to walk back anti-renewables comments.

But the MPs said it was evident Joyce’s newfound energy was not being expended trying to topple Littleproud. Liberal MPs said the veterans affairs spokesman’s political judgement was an underrated asset in shadow cabinet despite his relative lack of discipline.

Joyce and Nationals leader David Littleproud during question time at Parliament House in February.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Instead, he threw his support behind the campaign to get Julian Assange released, the most senior conservative to do so in Australia and credited with softening the Coalition stance over time.

“I stopped drinking and went fencing; did farming and just physical work,” Joyce said. “People say I’m sharper.”

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