Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, 50, is expecting a child with a former staffer, Vikki Campion, 33, and the timeline suggests the affair started while Campion was in Joyce’s employment.
It’s an assumption made more believable by Joyce’s continuous side-stepping of the question on Wednesday night’s 7:30. And, earlier in the day, Joyce’s estranged wife Natalie told The Australian the affair “has been going on for many months and started when [Campion] was a paid employee”.
Joyce, a father-of-four, is trying desperately to keep his private life private. And, almost certainly, the affair was mutually consensual.
But there is an important question that must be raised, and the host of ABC’s 7:30 Leigh Sales was the one to ask it: “Do you think that’s an appropriate way for a boss to behave?”
Joyce didn’t have an answer ready.
“I’m not going to go into the iterations of a private relationship,” he told her. “There’s nothing beyond the consensual. This is a private matter and everyone’s trying to second-guess what is a deeply private matter.”
Sales mentioned the admissions of two senior married AFL executives who quit in July last year after it emerged they had both conducted mutual relationships with younger female staff members. They said at the time they were “in the wrong” and “truly sorry”.
“Isn’t that the same situation here?” Sales asked Joyce, to no response.
Watch Barnaby Joyce stumble his way through his response in the below video.
Top Comments
Oh FFS - are we really going to automatically assume the woman is the "victim" in this? If she didn't want to sleep with him, she had that choice. If he kept pressuring her, then she had a clear cut case for sexual harassment and could easily take him to the cleaners. But this sounds like a consensual relationship so all that happens afterwards are consequences to choices.
If it all turns to shit, well that's life. Women are usually left holding the baby, whether that's fair or not and if she thinks that sucks, then maybe she should have thought about the wife of 24 years and 4 children before she knowingly jumped into bed with this disgusting man.
But this situation will continue to keep arising because many women are attracted to powerful men. That’s simply fact.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just biology / evolution at work. But if women are inclined to seek out powerful / higher status men, generally speaking, then this ‘power dynamic’ will always be around.