Barnaby Joyce has happily made himself the butt of jokes and replayed it to Nationals faithful as the boy from the bush getting the best of city slickers his entire political career. But there is something sad about his latest pratfall.
An image from video footage of Barnaby Joyce on the footpath in the Canberra suburb of Braddon on Wednesday night.Credit: Nine
Footage of our former deputy prime minister lying on his back near a gutter in Canberra mumbling profanities into his mobile will be replayed worldwide for years as shorthand for Australian politicians.
Yet his regrettable fall from grace outside Assembly The People’s Pub in Braddon last Wednesday suggests Joyce is clearly unwell and needs understanding and help and should seek treatment.
Joyce emerged days after video of his footpath antics video was published by Daily Mail Australia to admit he made a “big mistake” mixing alcohol and prescription medication. His father-in-law said he had received devastating family news shortly before. Meanwhile, supporters in the Coalition rallied around to focus on his welfare and get him back to work.
Once, the Australian thing to do when an older man fell to the ground would have been to render assistance, but Joyce is a victim of his own fame. His wife, Vikki Campion, made a valid observation about the brutality of modern-day celebrity: “I’ve been with Barnaby when we have found a man in the same state on the street and rather than take a video and sell it to the media, he picked the guy up and took him home. We later found out there had been problems with his medication and if he hadn’t helped him back he could have been in a very bad situation,” she said. “It’s disgusting that when he was in need they could not even check he was OK.”
And if celebrity has created a hard, unsympathetic society, Joyce’s travails with alcohol and prescription drugs also suggest that despite promising to change the culture, MPs seem to have learnt little from the plethora of recent incidents concerning alcohol and sexual harassment that have beset their cosy world of privilege. For some, the federal parliament of Australia remains an unsafe and dangerous workplace, reluctant to get its own house in order.
Last July, a third allegation of sexual harassment against Victorian senator David Van exposed parliament as a workplace culture that covers up the behaviour it professes to abhor. Van has denied all allegations of inappropriate conduct and continues to sit in parliament.
In 2021, an independent review of workplace culture at Parliament House by former sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins found four out of five people working in parliamentary offices had experienced sexual harassment. More than half had experienced at least one incident of bullying, sexual harassment or actual or attempted sexual assault. Jenkins’ recommendations, including a new code of conduct, were enthusiastically embraced by the parliament.
Joycean antics show parliament needs new stream of consciousness
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12.02.2024
Barnaby Joyce has happily made himself the butt of jokes and replayed it to Nationals faithful as the boy from the bush getting the best of city slickers his entire political career. But there is something sad about his latest pratfall.
An image from video footage of Barnaby Joyce on the footpath in the Canberra suburb of Braddon on Wednesday night.Credit: Nine
Footage of our former deputy prime minister lying on his back near a gutter in Canberra mumbling profanities into his mobile will be replayed worldwide for years as shorthand for Australian politicians.
Yet his regrettable fall from grace outside Assembly The People’s Pub in Braddon last Wednesday suggests Joyce is clearly unwell and needs understanding and help and should........
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