Barnaby Joyce: the secret that inevitably gave birth to turmoil

The Turnbull government went to enormous lengths to keep the Barnaby Joyce ­affair secret, a process that deserves scrutiny.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce with his now pregnant partner, Vikki Campion.

The Turnbull government went to enormous lengths to keep the Barnaby Joyce ­affair secret, a process that deserves scrutiny.

Make no mistake: the government hid the story, tried to bury it deep — not because they thought this was a private matter, and therefore nobody’s business, but because so much was at stake.

Barnaby Joyce’s affair, the breakdown of his marriage, this new pregnancy with a woman who once worked in his office, put the stability, and perhaps even the ­future, of the Turnbull government at risk.

Lest anyone forget: the Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader might look like a classic, ruddy-faced Aussie bushie but, as of last August, he was technically also a New Zealander, facing a by-election in the semi-rural seat of New England, which was key to the Coalition’s control of the lower house.

Barnaby Joyce in parliament yesterday after revelations about his relationship with Vikki Campion. Picture: AAP

As everyone now knows, by the time the campaign for New Eng­land got under way last November, Joyce’s personal life was in turmoil, and so was his office, with relationships between staff ­members and family members breaking down regularly, and spectacularly. Instead of forcing him to ’fess up, the government went into ­kill-and-bury mode, ­actively obstructing any attempt by any number of journalists to get to the bottom of the turmoil.

Last night, Joyce appeared on the ABC’s 7.30 to declare his marriage breakdown was “one of the great failures of my life”.

He declined to say whether he had had an ­affair, as his estranged wife alleges, or whether the relationship had started while the woman was a paid employee.

He claimed Freedom of Information requests had shown he had never misused taxpayer funds on travel with his new partner.

A pregnant Vikki Campion in Canberra. Picture John Grainger

None of the FOI requests showed anything publicly; they were all refused.

Instead of referring to his new partner by name, he described her as “a pregnant lady”. “I think that once we start going through this salami slicing of a ­private life, then where does it end?” Joyce said.

“I can’t quite fathom why basically a pregnant lady walking across the road deserves (the) front page. I don’t know what the political purpose is to that.

“It’s a private matter. I don’t think it helps me. I don’t think it helps my family. I don’t think it helps anybody in the future for us to start making this part of the public discussion.”

Here is the timeline, as it relates to Joyce, and the soon-to-be mother of his fifth child.

Vikki Campion, 33, grew up a country kid in Queensland.

One of her first jobs in journalism was at The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, where she was a well-liked and well-regarded member of staff.

She moved from the Telegraph to the NSW parliament, assisting Nationals members, such as former state leader Troy Grant, with media inquiries and their social media accounts.

In 2016, the Nationals employed her to assist the party at a federal level, including on the federal election campaign — and ­especially to assist Joyce.

Barnaby Joyce and his now-estranged wife Natalie arriving at the Midwinter Ball in June last year. Picture: Ray Strange

He had quite the battle on his hands, even then, with Tony Windsor running against him, hard.

Campion became Joyce’s right-hand woman during that campaign, and that’s not innuendo. They genuinely liked each other, and Joyce soon found himself relying heavily on his young staffer, texting and emailing her dozens of times a day.

Not everyone in his office was impressed. Rumours of an affair started to spread, and indeed were helped along by some of those who practise the dark art of gossip in Canberra.

Staff in Joyce’s office who liked, and were loyal to, his wife, Natalie Joyce, heard those rumours, and grew suspicious. Natalie Joyce heard them, too.

As she acknowledged in her statement yesterday, she had ­always trusted her husband to travel widely as part of his job, and to spend weeks in Canberra, while she held the fort, raising their four daughters. “Our family life has had to be shared during Barnaby’s political career and it was with trust that we let campaign and office staff into our homes and into our lives,” she said.

With tension at boiling point, the Prime Minister’s Office grew concerned. By mid-last year, Campion had moved on from Joyce’s office to a higher paid position with Resources Minister Matt Canavan. The Australian yesterday put questions to Canavan’s office about the title she was given, and how much she was paid, and what kind of work she did, but — as every media outlet that has tried to follow this story has discovered — we soon hit a brick wall.

When Canavan got caught in the citizenship crisis, Campion moved again, this time back to Joyce’s office and then on to ­another National, Damian Drum, whose office likewise had no comment on the title she held.

 

Rumours of an affair did not go away, even as she exited.

The Australian understands that a Turnbull government staffer asked Joyce to make sure that his wife, not Ms Campion, was by his side at the press gallery mid-winter ball last June. A spokesman for the prime minister’s office says the suggestion that the direction came from the Prime Minister’s office is “completely untrue. “

In any case, Natalie Joyce turned up at the ball looking gorgeous but left early.

In August, it was revealed that Joyce was a dual citizen.

Once his case was confirmed by the High Court in October, he said he would run again, and the stage was set for a bloody battle for New England, with Windsor on the sidelines this time, spreading the rumour of an affair as far as he could, using Twitter as his conduit.

By then, Joyce’s office was in turmoil, and some in the Nationals had begun to doubt his judgment.

A campaign to get the story gathered pace. At least two journalists made Freedom of Information requests, seeking information about Campion’s ­expenses, perhaps in an effort to show that she was travelling with him.

FOI requests, covering Campion’s pay, and responsibilities, and movements, and expenses, were lodged with his office.

Who did she work for?

What work did she do?

When and why did she go ­travelling with him?

By what process was she moved from his office to that of Canavan, and from there to Drum, and by what process was she made redundant, and what kind of payout did she get?

None of this is to suggest wrongdoing by Joyce, or ­Campion, or any other staff, but the response was always the same: “Neither the minister nor his office will comment on employment matters relating to any staff ­members.”

Finally, The Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson tiptoed into the fray, writing a carefully worded story saying that Joyce was ­battling “vicious innuendo” as he tried to hold New England.

She was criticised by fellow members of the Canberra press gallery for trying to get the yarn up, with some reporters saying that even if something was going on, it was a private matter.

But was it?

Joyce was campaigning in New England as a pillar of the community, a proud husband and father, the upholder of conservative values, including marriage. But the press could not have failed to ­notice that his daughters did not join him on the campaign trail.

A man accused him of adultery in the pub. Joyce stood up and knocked the man’s hat off.

On polling day, it was his mother, not his wife, who accompanied him to the voting booth. By this stage, everyone knew the marriage was in crisis. One small independent website came out and said he was having an “illicit affair with a staffer in his office that has led to upheaval in his marriage and discontent in his workplace”.

No mainstream media outlet followed suit.

Senior Nationals MPs last year grew concerned about Joyce’s ­erratic behaviour as he attempted to navigate his affair with Campion. Several colleagues were understood to have confronted Campion and Joyce about the relationship, with concerns it was having a negative impact on the Nationals leader’s performance.

Joyce began moving against people who weren’t sufficiently supportive of his leadership. Darren Chester found himself without a portfolio, dumped as infrastructure minister and from cabinet in a December reshuffle.

Queenslander Keith Pitt also found himself on the backbench. A Queensland senator, Barry O’Sullivan, is thought to have sided with Natalie Joyce, creating yet more tension. And then Joyce lost a key ally, his deputy, Fiona Nash.

Despite all this, he comfortably won the New England by-election on December 2, and resumed his cabinet posts the same day. On December 7, Joyce told parliament that he and Natalie were separated. In the same statement, he ­acknowledged that he was “not any form of saint”. Natalie would seem to agree.

In her statement yesterday, she said: “This situation is devastating on many fronts” and “will be made worse” by the events playing out publicly. She asked that she and her girls be “given some privacy and time to come to terms with the consequences and take steps to plan our future”.

It is hard to see that happening. Australia hasn’t had much of a tradition of reporting on the private lives of politicians, and they — the pollies, and many journos — would like to keep it that way. Why? Because he’s not the only one. And now it’s open season.