Barnaby Joyce's ex-wife Natalie breaks her silence on embarrassing Canberra sidewalk video – as politician's father-in-law lashes out at 'shocker'

EXCLUSIVE

The ex-wife of former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has broken her silence after Daily Mail Australia published a video of her ex-husband lying on a footpath in Canberra and mumbling profanities.

Bomb video showed Joyce, 56, talking on the phone as he lay on the footpath in the suburb of Braddon at about 11.26pm on Wednesday.

During the incident – which Joyce now blames on a combination of alcohol and medication – he could be heard saying 'dead f***ing c***'.

He had fallen from a planter to the ground, 'rolled' and continued his conversation with his wife Vikki Campion, while a passer-by filmed the bizarre scene on their mobile phone.

Natalie Abberfield, the mother of Barnaby's four adult daughters, said Monday of her ex-husband: “I hope he's doing well.”

'I'm not going to say more. It's his private life. I'm not in his life anymore.'

Asked to comment on the medication Joyce was taking, Mrs Abberfield said: 'I don't know – and if I did I wouldn't tell you!'

Peter Campion, Barnaby's father-in-law, called the politician a “shocker” for sticking to his medication.

'He's working on something. I know when it comes to medicine he's a shocker.

'Vikki is always at him to take them, but he doesn't.

“He forgets to take them, forgets to stay the course of whatever he's on.”

Mr Campion said he did not think Joyce was taking blood pressure medication. 'You mean the red face? No, that's something different.

'He even turns red when he's not excited. He's not an alcoholic.'

Mr Campion then made a surprising suggestion for all politicians working in Parliament House in Canberra.

While he was careful to note that his son-in-law's incident had occurred “after” Parliament had risen and was outside the building, he suggested that politicians should be “breathed upon entry” every day.

“That's what they do in the mines,” Mr Campion said. “They should pass a law requiring drug and alcohol testing in every department.

'It's a serious place. They pass laws.”

Joyce said on Monday morning he drank alcohol after Parliament rose at 10pm, telling Natalie Barr on Sunrise: 'Look, I've obviously made a big mistake. There's no excuse for it.

'There's a reason. And it was a very eventful walk home, wasn't it?

'I'm taking a prescription drug and they say certain things can happen to you if you drink [on it], and they were absolutely 100 percent right. They did that.'

Mr Joyce responded to suggestions from some that he should resign or be reprimanded as a result of his actions by saying it was “not really my decision.”

“I'm not going to get into a long dialogue about what other people might want to do,” he said.

Last weekend, Mr Campion revealed to Daily Mail Australia that Joyce had “really bad family news” on the day he lay down.

'He has already lost a brother cancer, that's where you should start. “He had very bad similar news, which is not for me to reveal, but of the same magnitude and which affected him deeply,” he said.

Mr Campion lives in north Queensland and is a former candidate for Clive Palmer's United Australia Party in Bob Katter's federal seat of Kennedy.

He plans to stand again in the Queensland state election later this year. This time he will be active in the state seat of Cook, which occupies the Gulf of Carpentaria.

He agreed with his daughter Vikki's sentiment that instead of filming Joyce, the person who did so should have helped the MP.

“That's what Barnaby would have done.”

He said Vikki and Joyce's sons, Sebastian and Tom, would remain in Tamworth for the duration of the term, now that the older boy had started nursery school.

The retired firefighter said it had been an eventful few days for his family, with his Labrador cross-breed Doggo recovering after nearly dying from a red-bellied black snakebite.

Mr Campion and his wife have started a GoFundMe page for Doggo.