Did you see the video and memes over the weekend of Nationals MP and former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce lying down next to a planter box on a Canberra footpath at night, swearing loudly into his phone?
Since the video surfaced, Barnaby Joyce has said he’d been drinking and was on prescription medication at the time.
On this afternoon episode of The Briefing, Bension Siebert speaks with Sean Kelly, a columnist with the Nine Newspapers and former advisor to prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
He said the incident raises a question about the expectations we place on our politicians and whether those expectations are different for different people. Should there be consequences for this behaviour?
While Opposition leader Peter Dutton has suggested that onlookers should have offered support to Barnaby Joyce, rather than simply filming him, Sean is not so sure.
“The coalition are doing a pretty good job of trying to turn this fact that Barnaby Joyce was filmed into the story itself, into there being some moral outrage about somebody filmed him rather than assisting him. I mean, it sounds to me like he was lying on his back talking pretty animatedly. I’m not sure, it was very clear that he needed help.”
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