Below are the top five most infuriating moments from Australia’s biggest interview fail:
1) He blatantly refused to “tell all”
I completely agree that Barnaby Joyce’s wife Natalie Joyce and her four daughters should have been spared the humiliation of last night’s TV train wreck, but surely that’s something the former Deputy Prime Minister should have considered prior to signing the eye-watering $150,000+ contract with Channel Seven.
“Who made the first move?” asked reporter Alex Cullen. “I don’t know, mate. When did it happen with your missus?” Joyce fired back.
Evasion techniques were used throughout the rest of the interview with Joyce becoming combative whenever he felt uncomfortable.
“I’m not going to get into the gory details”, “I’m not going to answer you”, “I’m not going to go into that space,” “that issue stays completely off grounds” etc. Frankly, if we were Channel Seven we’d be asking for our money back.
2) He tried to blame his baby for the backlash
“You just look at his two blue eyes staring up at the blue sky and staring back at you, and you look at Sebastian and you think, ‘Boy, man you caused some problems.'” These were the loving words spoken by Joyce about his newborn last night.
The baby caused some problems smells remarkably similar to “the dog ate my homework”.
“Oh boy you caused some problems” Barnaby Joyce says about looking into his little baby’s blue eyes.
Barnaby, your son didn’t cause *any* problems. He is a newborn. An innocent baby. Any problems you face are of your making – not his. 🤯🤯🤯 #barnababy— Georgina Dent (@georgiedent) June 3, 2018
3) We’re supposed to feel better that Sebastian has a $150,000+ trust fund set up in his name
Joyce and Campion wanted to make one thing very clear at the beginning of last night’s program: not one cent of the interview’s proceeds would be going to them, but would be set up in a trust account for their baby.
As Campion reasoned, “Everyone else is making money out of Sebastian except for Sebastian,” so surely he deserves a piece of the pie? Joyce was also emphatic: “This is really important because we designed it this way. Because we knew this question would be asked. This is a trust account for Sebastian so nothing’s going to me, nothing’s going to Vikki– this is for a young bloke called Sebastian Joyce.”
Somehow this knowledge didn’t make me feel any better about the situation. What kid gets a life-changing amount of money set up in a trust fund for him to access later in life because of his parent’s affair? Try explaining the fairness of that one to the long line of University and TAFE graduates struggling to pick up a reasonably paying job.
4) Not one question was asked about the misuse of taxpayer dollars and time
“To be quite frank, I couldn’t give a shit about the political ramifications”, Joyce explained last night about the saga.
Well, he should. His role was funded by taxpayers, who expected him to fulfil his obligations accordingly. For months, this was not the case — he was apparently more preoccupied with his personal affairs (excuse the pun) than the welfare of the country. Not to mention the looming question mark over Campion’s career trajectory and the cushy posts she received in both Matt Canavan’s office and Nationals’ whip Damian Drum.
Joyce also claimed that he never anticipated holding the Deputy PM position for long after he found out Vikki was pregnant, and he had no intention of maintaining the role after the baby was born. “I was fighting more out of spite than logic” in the end he said.
Well thanks for wasting our time and money, mate.
5) He tried to claim he and Vikki had unanimously agreed on the “grey-area” comment
Yep, remember that classy time (only a few weeks ago) that Barnaby tried to claim the paternity of baby Sebastian was in doubt, telling Fairfax it was “a bit of a grey area”. Well, last night he tried to claim that the decision to say that, had been a unanimous one between himself and Vikki.
But she wasn’t having a bar of it.
“I didn’t use the words grey-area” she said looking incredulous. “I was deeply hurt by the grey-area headline.”
Joyce then tried to blame the situation on media scrutiny. “I reckon after a couple of weeks you’d probably say something crazy.”
Crazy maybe. Throwing your pregnant partner under the bus? Probs not.