The most gobsmacking moments in the Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion interview
Barnaby Joyce’s new partner Vikki Campion has broken her silence about her relationship with the former Deputy PM, revealing she was pressured into having an abortion after she discovered she was pregnant.
Speaking to Channel 7’s Sunday Night, Ms Campion said she had purchased the medicine to terminate her baby after “conservatives” within the National Party pressured her.
“They came to me and they said ‘You’re pregnant and you have to get an abortion’. And they said, ‘If you don’t, they’re gonna come after you’,” she said.
“And I said, ‘it’s too late, it has a heartbeat.’ And they said, ‘If you don’t, they’re gonna come after you.’’’
“And they did,” Mr Joyce said.
Ms Campion said she was “overwhelmed” to discover she was pregnant in winter 2017 and that she had taken the pregnancy test alone.
“I took the pregnancy test and that was it … I felt overwhelmed by the complexity of the situation which we’d caused ourselves,” she said.
Ms Campion said she considered everything from abortion to adoption.
“I bought the medicine online. You can’t do it in the ACT. I drove interstate. I walked in. And then I walked out again,” Ms Campion said of how close she came to terminating the pregnancy.
In the end, she decided to keep their baby, citing Mr Joyce’s anti-abortion stance and the fact it had been a “miracle” for her to conceive.
“I had medical issues which made me believe and what I had been told, certainly by doctors, that I wouldn’t have children,” she said.
The couple, however, refused to name who had targeted Ms Campion but Mr Joyce said those involved were “absolute scum of the earth people.”
“Their contribution to it is they’re gonna try and make an incredibly difficult situation almost unbearable by saying to you that, ‘Woman, you will do this if you want a career in this place.’ And that’s your Australian Parliament,” he said.
But the most awkward moment of the interview came when the couple clashed over Mr Joyce’s controversial statements that the paternity of Ms Campion’s child was a “grey area”.
In the interview, Mr Joyce attempted to distance himself from the comments.
“Yeah, well, it was actually a decision we made together,” he said.
Ms Campion responded: “I didn’t say use the words ‘grey area’. I was deeply hurt by the ‘grey area’ headline.”
The former Nationals leader then blamed the media and sleepless nights for saying “something crazy”.
“If I lock you in this house and put a heap of journalists outside, and stop you sleeping, and have drones at your window, coming up to your window. And they go and knock all your neighbours and then film you through your back fence, I reckon after a couple weeks, you’ll probably say something crazy,” he said.