Disgraced ex-deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce appears to have made yet another calamitously misjudged comment – yes, another one – by urging the media to butt out of his private life, one bloody day after he went out of his way to suggest the child conceived during his affair with former media advisor Vikki Campion may not actually be his.
The Nationals Party backbencher held a press conference today in which he implored the nation’s publications to quit snooping around his private life. The entire saga is “nobody’s business but mine and Vikki’s,” Joyce said, adding “we’re not here to be part of some ongoing litany of discussion about this.”
Again, those comments come very, very shortly after Joyce insinuated the child’s parentage is a “grey area” in an apparent attempt to criticise News Corp’s original report that Campion is definitely pregnant with Joyce’s child. He also used the conference to insist he wouldn’t seek a paternity test and would raise the child as his own.
The mixed messaging is unlikely to sit well with Joyce’s political peers, who have not exactly taken kindly to his handling of the revelation and his seemingly callous treatment of Campion in order to save face. Hell, an anonymous Nationals colleague told the Herald Sun that Joyce was a “first-class cunt” for his actions.
The child is expected in just over a month.
