Barnaby Joyce doesn’t want privacy, it’s all an act

Illustration: Sturt Krygsman

If Barnaby Joyce wants some privacy for himself, for his girlfriend, for his baby, for his daughters and his wife, he should stop talking about his private life.

The Joyce saga has entered the twilight zone of low-rent narcissism. His latest foray into the media to discuss his private life, this time raising questions about the paternity of his girlfriend’s baby, is another example of that old axiom that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. By trying to outdo the Kardashians on sharing way too much information, Joyce has outed himself as very different to what many Australians may have thought of him. Not since Princess Diana have we seen such a crude spectacle of a media-seeker complaining when they can’t tame the beast they keep feeding.

The irony is that the bloke in the Akubra, known for his straight-talking style, who brilliantly tapped into the bush, has failed every pub test and set off bullshit detectors that work especially well in country Australia. By his own mismanagement of this debacle, Joyce has squandered sympathy that might have come to him.

Joyce’s affair with his former staff member Vikki Campion kicked off the usual debate over politics and privacy. But that debate stalled each time Joyce spoke about his private life. His regular musings and his inevitable fall from grace have become a textbook lesson for anyone in the public eye about how not to make a claim for privacy.

When Joyce announced he would resign as deputy prime minister and leader of the Nationals, he demanded a circuit-breaker to the media fascination with his personal life. Yet all along he could have been that circuit-breaker. He just couldn’t see it in the fog of his own dramas.

Standing against the backdrop of grey skies and houses in Armidale, Joyce said: “Right from the start, this is never about me. It’s about the person in the weatherboard and iron.” But right from the start this has been about Barnaby.

It was all about Barnaby when he decided to keep his marriage breakdown and his new relationship with a former staff member from voters before the New England by-election. That wasn’t done for privacy reasons. It was done to secure Joyce’s bid to retake the seat.

Joyce and Malcolm Turnbull could have been effective circuit-breakers. Before the December 2 by-election, Joyce could have told the Prime Minister, or Turnbull could have asked Joyce about the speculation, and both could have agreed that voters were entitled to know that Joyce’s personal circumstances had changed, not to mention that perceived conflicts had arisen where taxpayers paid for his new partner to be slotted into jobs with other National MPs. The two men kept quiet, hoping we would be less interested in the new year.

When news of a pregnancy and Joyce’s relationship with Campion broke on the morning of February 7, Joyce demanded privacy for a private matter. But his reckless decision to go on the ABC’s 7.30 that same evening to reiterate how much he wanted privacy reeked of poor media management and even poorer judgment.

“I don’t think it helps anybody in the future to start making this a public discussion. As much as I can, I will keep private matters private,” Joyce said. When he used the “private” word about 30 times in a seven-minute interview, he was too cute by half. And he treated voters with contempt, again, as if we couldn’t see the hypocrisy of a bloke who wanted privacy so much he can’t turn down an interview to tell the world that the end of his marriage was “one of the greatest failures” of his life.

As the saga rolled into the second week, the claim to privacy grew even more spurious when we learned that Campion had been given high-paid jobs with other MPs. Even if there weren’t clear breaches of guidelines drafted by politicians for themselves, conflicts according to real-world definitions looked apparent enough. That old aphorism that justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done has lasted through the ages for a reason, and extends well beyond the judicial world from which it started. The perception of wrongdoing kept Barnaby’s personal life in the papers as a matter of public interest.

When Joyce took a week off last month after a lashing from Turnbull to spend time with his family, that was all about him too. Joyce wasn’t so much taking stock as trying to build support. He gave an interview on February 21 telling us, and a livid Turnbull, that he wasn’t going anywhere as Nationals leader.

Speaking to Fairfax Media, Joyce repeated his claim to privacy, saying the breakdown of his marriage was “between me and my God. I can understand how Natalie can be angry, absolutely, but how it’s other people’s business, I don’t know.” It’s not that hard to understand. Joyce keeps making it our business each time he fronts a camera or talks to a newspaper journalist about himself and his new life.

In the same interview, Joyce predicted that the tide would turn in his favour because people would “get bored” of the coverage. He was right about people getting bored, but the tide has turned against him because he made this tawdry saga all about him.

Then last weekend, almost two weeks since he went to the backbench, Joyce decided to feed the beast again. Speaking to Fairfax Media about “grey areas” about paternity and whether he is the father of Campion’s unborn baby, about his travel overseas at the possible time of conception, here was a new low in narcissism and outright yuck-factor. This blew Joyce’s claim to privacy to smithereens. It also rang a warning bell that when politics is worse than reality TV, we’re in danger of forgetting that a government is there to govern.

And once again it risked hurting those closest to Joyce, in this case an unborn baby boy who, one day, may not appreciate this public outing of paternity questions. This public implosion came about so Joyce could have a go at the media, to accuse it of not checking whether Campion’s baby was “Joyce’s bundle”. But, here again, Joyce seems swept up in the theatre of Barnaby because The Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson emailed Joyce’s chief of staff with that question before publishing a photo of the pregnant Campion.

Sadly, Joyce’s look-at-me gig may not be over. In his resignation speech he said he would be finishing a book that he started after the High Court found he was a dual citizen. According to one report, Joyce’s book will be Australia’s version of The Hillbilly Elegy, a bestselling memoir by JD Vance whose penniless and dysfunctional family are the forgotten people of American society. Except this is the Riverview edition featuring Joyce, the son of rich parents, who went to Sydney’s exclusive St Ignatius College Riverview.

Joyce suffers from the Princess Diana dilemma. He did the most to blur the line between public and private by furiously courting the media during this debacle. By exploiting the media, the man who built an image as the rambunctious outsider has exposed himself as just another narcissistic insider after all.