Barnaby Joyce regrets doing paid tell-all interview
Barnaby Joyce has admitted he regrets the paid tell-all interview with his partner Vikki Campion, after a confrontation with a photographer outside a church in Armidale.
The former deputy PM ramped up calls for more stringent privacy laws after arguing with the photographer on the street a week after the pair gave a $150,000 television interview to Seven’s Sunday Night.
“We certainly wouldn’t have done the interview if we thought [the media scrutiny] was just going to continue on, obviously it is,” he told Seven on Monday.
Mr Joyce said while he accepted public figures would get media scrutiny, the law needed to be changed to protect people such as partner Ms Campion and their baby son Sebastian from paparazzi.
“These people have the capacity to destroy someone’s life,” Mr Joyce said.
“Private individuals, kids especially, should have greater protections than what they’ve got. They haven’t got any.”
He said Ms Campion, his former media adviser, had been harassed for months after it was revealed in February this year that Mr Joyce was having an affair with Ms Campion, who was pregnant with their child.
The backbencher took to Twitter on Sunday to plead for privacy after spotting a man with a camera "hiding in the bushes" outside the Catholic cathedral where he attended Mass.