At Home With Barnaby: An Exclusive Investigative Report
As Barnaby Joyce ushers me into his tastefully-appointed townhouse, I am struck by a distinctive aroma in the air. Imperial Leather, I wonder aloud? The embattled Deputy Prime Minister quickly puts me right: it’s the family cow, which Joyce has legal custody of every other week. “He’s sleeping right now, so we’ll have to be a bit quiet,” he says.
I seat myself on a plush couch and prepare to do some hard-hitting journalism. “How are you?” I begin.
“I’m fine,” says Joyce. “I’ve never been better,” and it’s true, there is a glossy glow to his normal vermilion complexion that speaks of a man in love, at peace, and living rent-free. I ask him why he wanted to do this interview. “I just wanted to set the record straight,” he explains in his soft but masculine bush brogue. “There’s been a lot of hurtful misinformation out there lately, so I thought the best thing to do would be to invite you round for a bit of hard-hitting, no-holds-barred, forensically-detailed reportage. Biscuit?” I accept gratefully.
I compliment Joyce on the immaculate state of his charming home. Hard to believe, I say, that a man so busy with affairs of state could find the time to keep his home so beautiful. Getting down to the tough questions, I grill him, “Is it difficult balancing a full-time job with housework?”
“What you’ve got to understand,” says Joyce, stroking his chin in a manner reminiscent of a Roman philosopher-king, “is that this isn’t a palace. A lot of people have been saying it’s a palace. There was a story in Crikey the other day: Barnaby Lives In A Palace And Is Served Tea By A Trained Monkey”. Almost half that headline is factually incorrect. This isn’t a palace at all, it’s a bachelor pad. Mate,” he induces a warm inner glow by confirming our friendship, “this is a plain old bachelor pad. It’s just me and my pregnant girlfriend, living the old bachelor lifestyle.”
Aptly enough, that very girlfriend, Vikki Campion, joins us now, sitting next to Joyce and smiling prettily, in just the way you’d expect a confident career woman who is also dedicated to her family would. “Look at these payslips,” she says winningly, handing over papers that confirm she was only paid around $130,000 a year for her work in various MPs’ offices.
Joyce nods vigorously. “You see?” he cries angrily but with style. “Earning $130,000 a year. Does that sound like a woman who is earning $190,000 a year? Anyone who says that I violated the code of conduct forbidding a minister from getting a job that pays $190,000 a year for his girlfriend needs to apologise to me right now.” All I can do is shake my head, speechless, at the great wrong that has been done to this gentle, $130,000-a-year-earning mother-to-be.
But journalism remains to be done, so I immediately ask Joyce and Campion whether they think it’s unfair how mean people have been to them. It is unfortunately a reporter’s lot to have to pose such brutal questions at time. They both agree that yes, it has been unfair, and people should be nicer. If nothing else one must admire their honesty.
What effect, I ask, must all this be having on their unborn child, who no doubt can hear all the negative commentary in the womb and is already suffering low self-esteem? Joyce’s voice grows soft and attractive as he muses on his fears for his unborn son.
“I love all my children,” he says, dropping this bombshell revelation almost casually. “The one thing that has deeply annoyed me is that there is somehow an inference that this child is somehow less worthy than other children, and it’s almost spoken about in the third person. I don’t think it’s right to speak of my son in the third person. Can’t they speak to him in the second person — why not address their comments directly to him? Or even in the first person — nobody seems to be willing to adopt the persona of my unborn son and speak in a little baby voice and say things that a baby might say — but if this country was fair dinkum that’s what people would be doing. What they’re doing instead is speaking about it in the third person, and where I come from — St Ignatius’ College, Riverview — that’s considered rude.”
Are they afraid people will judge the new baby more harshly than they judge other babies, due to his controversial conception. “That’s exactly it!” Joyce says. “I don’t want him to grow up being taunted and abused and insulted and ostracised and called names and beaten up and occasionally sent bags of urine in the mail. I hope he never has to face any of that until he’s an adult, like his old man did.”
“Also, the baby’s middle names are going to be my brothers’ names,” says Campion, and you can tell she means it.
As we sip our tea and Joyce gives me a relaxing shoulder massage, I ask whether he is afraid of losing the support of the Nationals party room. “I’m never scared of democracy,” he says, showing courage remarkable in one so youthful-looking.
Later, Barnaby does the washing-up, tenderly running the dishcloth over the fine porcelain. It’s easy to see why he will make such a wonderful father: if a man shows this much care to his plates, how much more caring will he be towards an actual baby. I ask him if he wants to go on the record with a comment on how his forearms became so toned and powerful without losing the gentleness of touch that made him a famously generous lover: he declines.
“I’m just a simple man,” he says, the sweat of an honest day’s work glistening on his larrikin brow. “All I want people to know is that a bloke whose marriage broke down is in a relationship with another person and they are having a child. We don’t have to go into the details of whose private life is none of whose business, or who behaved towards who with impeccable moral fibre, or what allegations of ministerial misconduct are the products of whose diseased socialist mind. I’m no angel, I’m just an ordinary Australian who is filled with too much love to be contained by just one family.”
With tears in my eyes, I clasp the Deputy Prime Minister’s hand, and apologise for my needlessly confrontational style of journalism. As I walk out into the warm Armidale night, I feel a swell of hope for the future: there are good men working for us all in Canberra. Godspeed to them all.
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