What Barnaby Joyce needs more than anything in the world right now is for someone who he loves and trusts to walk up to him, take him by the hands, look him deep in the eyes, and tell him to shut the fuck up.
Joyce has been continuously embroiled in scandal since the end of the last year, thanks to a series of revelations about his personal life and how his personal life was impacting his professional life, in addition to his complete inability to stop putting his foot in his mouth.
The man, clearly a high-level political genius, was somehow convinced of the notion that taking a $150,000 payout to do a heavily-billed interview for Channel 7 would finally take him out of the limelight. In his characteristic fashion, Joyce tried to play this down by blaming it on his partner.
In his quest to make himself an empathetic figure to the public again, Joyce managed to do the impossible yesterday: uploaded a video of himself in a confrontation with a paparazzo in which it was unclear which person was the biggest asshole.
Joyce recently put in for a fortnight of leave “following a routine check up“, but has by no means been keeping a low profile. Halfway through his leave, he slunk back into the news cycle again after it came out that he had been emailing NSW Nationals MPs asking them to vote against the bill that would implement 150m “safe access zones” around abortion clinics, allowing people to enter and exit them without being harassed by aggressive anti-abortion protesters.
Joyce this morning again attempted to address the fact that he’s always in the media by appearing on national TV, giving an interview to Sunrise. Not sure about the logic there either but, hey, he doesn’t need some fucker from a website telling him how to live his life.
EXCLUSIVE: @Barnaby_Joyce defends his actions after an ugly confrontation with a paparazzo.
“If someone was hiding outside your house, wouldn’t you go and say g’day?” pic.twitter.com/98HbPwgJ8E
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) June 10, 2018
Joyce expressed regret over doing the Channel 7 interview, telling Sunrise that they did it under the belief that it would be a “circuit breaker” for the media scrutiny on the couple and that they “certainly wouldn’t have done the interview if [they] thought it was just going to continue on.” Adding that “obviously it is.” Given that the interview didn’t actually answer any of the questions people actually cared about and that it was, in effect, just an already wealthy couple accepting a lump sum amounting to nearly twice Australia’s median household income just to launder their public image for an hour, it is not hugely surprising that this did not work.
He also took the time to address the disparity between his vocal disapproval of abortion clinic safe access zones with his new calls for privacy laws to protect his family from media scrutiny. Just in case you thought this was hypocritical as shit, don’t worry: he decided himself that it’s not.
He defended his stance by saying that people are aware he’s an avowed opponent of abortion and that the “tort of privacy” he’s putting forth would also cover those people:
If we had a proper tort of privacy, that would protect people going to clinics, absolutely. Because you wouldn’t be able to go up and harass somebody. It would be a much better protection than saying, ‘oh, stand back 150 metres’.
People know my position. I’ve always been a pro-lifer. People know that. But I’m saying that even a restriction is not the proper protection. A tort of privacy would be a much better action than a restrictive covenant about how close a person goes. How do you actually know what the person’s up to?
But if you actually said a person has the right to remain unmolested by being photographed, by being approached, as a private individual, then a tort of privacy would be a better action.
According to the ABC, co-sponsor of the safe access zones bill NSW Labor MLC Penny Sharpe rejected Joyce’s argument, pointing out that people would much prefer to be able to just safely enter and exit the clinics than having to have to resort to extensive legal battles if they do end up being harassed.
Fingers crossed the man just taps out for a little while so he can let this die down and focus on doing what he does best: being a chartered accountant that cosplays as a cowboy to win over voters.
