A self-interested protection racket run by politicians and journalists

Barnaby Joyce with his girlfriend and former staffer, Vikki Campion. Picture: Supplied.

For all the personal turmoil and political intrigue of the Barnaby Joyce affair the one point that should never be in question is that this was a legitimate story for reporting. The fact that politicians and journalists are in high dudgeon about it merely confirms what a self-interested protection racket they sometimes run.

Is the Joyce story a major issue? Probably not — there is no suggestion of malfeasance or misdeeds. The personal difficulties, betrayals and grievances of private relationships are none of our business, although they certainly will change the views of some voters about the Deputy Prime Minister.

The reason it is a story is simply the status of the politician. He is the Nationals leader and as Deputy Prime Minister, often performs the duties of Acting Prime Minister. The suggestion that a divorce, marriage or birth in the family of anyone who leads our nation would not be a story is absurd. Their family background and personal character are very much a part of their public and professional profile.

It is uncertain how far down the parliamentary pecking order such an obvious public interest might extend — just cabinet ministers, all frontbenchers or beyond? — but it certainly must apply to the Deputy Prime Minister.

Where the media coverage will always stretch the boundaries is if people proffer judgments on the personal aspects. We clearly have no right to do so, and should respect the people involved, especially the non-politicians, in this case an estranged wife, a girlfriend and four daughters.

Whether it had been the birth of the child, his next stint as Acting Prime Minister, the next Midwinter Ball or some official event, Joyce’s new relationship and impending child were always going to enter the news cycle at some stage. Rather than claim he “can’t quite fathom why basically a pregnant lady walking across the road deserves (the) front page,” Joyce should have realised there were political, media and personal dimensions at play and controlled and managed that process himself — especially for the benefit of the six women directly affected.

But The Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson (a former colleague at The Australian) got the story first. As is her determined way, where other journalists found only rumours and denials, she established the facts and published them. Good for her. That is journalism — discovering relevant information and putting it in the public domain.

The reaction to the basic facts is not something Markson or anyone else in the media can control. But the mealy-mouthed efforts of other media who buy into the story only on the basis of a discussion of media ethics are transparent and laughable.

They want to run the story, they know it is big news, but they are so uncertain how to simply relay the facts that they package the story as a debate about whether it should be public knowledge or not. How weak. If you have your doubts, ignore it; don’t run the pictures, don’t discuss the issue.

We saw politicians yesterday suggesting this story had no place in the public domain — one of them was Labor’s Tony Burke who left his wife for a staffer he had travelled the world with at taxpayers’ expense. We are entitled to dismiss such views. As for the Canberra Press Gallery, they might be concerned that some of their relationships with politicians or staffers could come under scrutiny. In some circumstances there could be a public interest in that occurring.

But their inconsistency in these matters is obvious. As a collective the gallery sat schtum on the politically-significant relationship between Labor’s Gareth Evans and Democrat-turned-Labor MP Cheryl Kernot for a full five years in the 1990s (Channel Nine’s Laurie Oakes broke the story after the relationship had ended).

And compare their coverage in recent years of historic allegations against Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten when they were teenagers. The relatively minor claims against Abbott triggered vastly more coverage and negative commentary than the far more serious police investigation did for Shorten. Why?

There are lines not to be crossed by the media and politicians; and it is sometimes difficult to know exactly where they should be drawn — but the marital status and family situation of a party leader will always be a matter for public consumption. This is one of the reasons politics is such a testing vocation.