Barnaby Joyce expecting baby with ex-staffer
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is expecting a baby with a former member of his staff.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is expecting a baby with a former member of his staff.
Sources close to the Nationals leader last night confirmed the relationship with former media adviser Vikki Campion, 33, after Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph revealed the pregnancy.
Mr Joyce, who will turn 51 in April, confirmed the breakdown of his 24-year marriage to Natalie Joyce, the mother of his four children, during the debate on same-sex marriage in federal parliament late last year.
Ms Campion, a former journalist on The Daily Telegraph, is reportedly due to give birth in April.
A spokesman for Mr Joyce, who opposed same-sex marriage and abstained from the vote, said last night he would not be commenting on his private life beyond what he had told parliament.
The relationship is reminiscent of Whitlam government deputy prime minister Jim Cairns’s relationship with his principal private secretary, Junie Morosi, in the 1970s.
Mr Joyce had declined to comment on his personal life when rumours of the relationship swept the campaign trail during the New England by-election campaign in November.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the couple had moved in together and Mr Joyce was “madly in love’’ but concerned about the welfare of his four daughters, who are in their late teens and early 20s.
Ms Campion left Mr Joyce’s office in April last year to work for one of his closest colleagues, Resources Minister Matt Canavan, in a more senior role.
When Senator Canavan resigned from cabinet amid questions over his Italian citizenship, she joined the office of Nationals chief parliamentary whip Damian Drum.
She then lost her job when Mr Drum moved from his role as whip to become the Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister.
Mr Joyce is a Catholic and has spoken often of his conservative social and economic values.
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