Barnaby Joyce demands his privacy be respected amid news he is expecting a baby with a former staffer

Barnaby Joyce has called the breakdown of his marriage ‘one of his greatest failures’ and said his private life is not news.

Barnaby Joyce on 7.30, on the ABC. Picture: Supplied

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has called for his personal privacy to be respected amid revelations he is expecting a child with a former staffer, rejecting suggestions he misused taxpayer funds to pursue the relationship.

Speaking on the ABC’s 7:30 program, Mr Joyce attacked the decision to publish a photograph of his pregnant former staffer Vikki Campion on the front page of The Daily Telegraph and conceded the breakdown of his 24-year marriage was “one of the greatest failures of my life.”

“What I want to do is make sure that private matters remain private,” Mr Joyce said. “I don’t think it profits anybody to drag private matters out into the public arena.”

“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.”

Mr Joyce said that media outlets had tried to determine whether he had misused taxpayer funds in pursuit of a relationship with Ms Campion through a range of Freedom of Information requests, but they had failed to turn up any evidence.

“It’s a fair question about the intersection between public expenses. There’s no problems about that,” he said. “This issue has been FOI’d — that’s freedom of information requests — from just about every media outlet for a very long period of time.

“Nothing has been found because there is nothing there. We’ve made sure that private matters remain private. And anything on a public account has been to do with my work as a politician.”

Mr Joyce declined to say whether the relationship started when Ms Campion was working for him as a paid staff member.

“I think that once we start going through this salami slicing of a private life then where does it end?” he said. “I’m not going to even entertain starting to talk about some sort of discussion about my private life in the public arena.”

Mr Joyce rejected suggestions that scrutiny of his private relations was justified because of his support for traditional marriage during the debate to expand the definition to encompass same-sex couples last year.

“How can that be? I mean, just because my marriage didn’t work out doesn’t mean that I disregard what marriages are about. It just means that on that instance, as I say, I failed. I’ll be upfront — I failed on that one.

“But I’m not going to start saying, well, therefore just because I failed I’m going to completely change my views (on) the definition. I don’t think anybody walks down the aisle with a view that it’s going to come to an end.”

Mr Joyce also warned it was important to make a “distinct decision to not turn Australia into the United States of America” by focussing on people’s personal lives.

Speaking about the end of his 24-year marriage, Mr Joyce noted it was “incredibly painful for everybody involved.

“I’m incredibly hurt that private issues get dragged out into the public arena,” he said.

“My relationship coming apart... I don’t think makes me terribly unusual. In fact it puts me in the same box as about 40 to 50 per cent of other marriages. I am not for one minute saying that is an admirable trait,” he said.

“I can say quite openly it’s probably one of the greatest failures of my life. I’m not proud of it… that is, in essence, the humanity of who we are and, after that, it is a private issue.”