Barnaby and Vikki’s first sit-down
BARNABY Joyce and his pregnant partner Vikki Campion have broken their silence over the affair that has rocked the Turnbull Government.
In an interview with Fairfax Media, the Deputy PM and Ms Campion said they fear their baby son will be viewed "somehow less worthy than other children".
The couple claimed they had been "forced out" of their rent-free townhouse in Armidale due to media intrusion as they appealed to politicians and members of the public to give them privacy.
"It's time to move on," the Nationals Leader told Fairfax Media.
The Deputy PM insisted his working relationship with Malcolm Turnbull was fine and said that Mr Turnbull had never directly asked him about the relationship with Ms Campion before it was revealed on the front page of The Daily Telegraph.
Ms Campion refused to be photographed during the interview and offered just one comment, saying that her son's middle names would be in honour of her two brothers.
"Their support has meant so much. They are the only people who knew," Ms Campion told Fairfax Media.
When asked how he felt about becoming a father again, Mr Joyce said: "The one thing that has deeply annoyed me is that there is somehow an inference that this child is somehow less worthy than other children, and it's almost spoken about in the third person."
"I love my daughters. I have four beautiful daughters and I love them to death. And now I will have a son. I don't pick winners, I'm not gonna love one more than another, but I'm not going to love one less than another either.
"I don't want our child to grow up as some sort of public display. I have to stop it from the start. It's a fact we are having a child, it's a fact it's a boy, it's not more or less loved than any of my other children.
"I don't want to say have sympathy for me. I just want people to look clinically at the facts and basically come to the conclusion he is not getting a gold star for his personal life, but he has made a commitment, he is with her, they're having a child, and in a 2018 world there is nothing terribly much to see there."
