Further details have emerged about the affair between traditional marriage champion Barnaby Joyce and his former media adviser Vikki Campion, with claims that Joyce’s wife Natalie knew about them as far back as last April, and went as far as to confront his girlfriend in the street.
In a piece published today in the Daily Telegraph, columnist Miranda Devine describes an afternoon drinks date she had with Joyce and Campion in Sydney in the early part of 2017. She is generally fairly complimentary of the “hardworking” Campion throughoug, saying:
“Vikki is a vivacious and immensely likeable Queensland country girl, tall and rangy, with a long mane of sun-kissed hair. She’s earthy, loud, a chain-smoker and, like her boss, impetuous. Not your classic femme fatale.”
Devine claims that she bonded with the pair as they stood out on the footpath punching darts, and notes that she detected “no obvious frisson of sexual tension” between the two of them. Nonetheless, five months after that afternoon drinks date, “Vikki was pregnant.”
The piece goes on to describe Natalie Joyce’s reaction to the affair, like some lurid incident from The Real Housewives Of Tamworth. Per Miranda Devine’s account:
“Last year, some time around April, Natalie had wind of the affair. Friends say the office stopped telling her what was in his diary and a wife’s intuition kicked in. She stormed up to Vikki in Tamworth and tore strips off her, a furious little pocket rocket facing up to a frightened gazelle. She called Vikki a ‘homewrecker’ in front of witnesses.”
Yikes. Natalie and Barnaby Joyce have four children, and have been married for 24 years. In her first public statement after news of her husband’s affair broke, she said:
“I am deeply saddened by the news that my husband has been having an affair and is now having a child with a former staff member … This situation is devastating on many fronts. For my girls who are affected by the family breakdown and for me as a wife of 24 years, who placed my own career on hold to support Barnaby through his political life …. Naturally we also feel deceived and hurt.”
The revelation of the affair has sparked questions over whether various high-paying National Party jobs, including a $191k gig as a senior adviser, were created specifically for Campion. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann insists that nothing inappropriate occurred, telling Sky News:
“She’s clearly somebody who is qualified to do the job and she was hired in certain positions based on merit and there’s nothing really further to add. All of my advice is that everything was absolutely above board.”
