The morning after a drunken Barnaby Joyce was embarrassed by a video of him sprawled on a Canberra footpath swearing into his phone going viral, he decided to get off the grog.
He said he hasn’t had a sip since. He and wife Vikki Campion have stopped storing alcohol. Colleagues said the firebrand has never been sharper. And he has lost 15 kilograms, partly by runs through Canberra’s northern suburbs and playing touch footy.
Portrait of Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Barnaby Joyce, at Parliament House in Canberra.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald
In the 57-year-old’s first interview reflecting on the incident he described as a low point in his life, Joyce said he realised he needed to change for his family and career.
“Big swathes of the night I don’t remember. And that’s never, ever happened to me before. And I never, ever want it to happen again,” he said from his Canberra office.
“I disgraced myself and I just woke up the next morning and said ‘that’ll do’, so I didn’t have another drink.”
The twice former deputy prime minister has been told by someone who closely inspected the video that his phone was upside-down. He may have been mumbling obscenities with nobody on the other end of the line.
Joyce has previously spoken about mental health troubles and having combined alcohol with medication on the night in February. But he insists he is not an alcoholic.
“If I was, it would have been impossible [to quit], I would have been desperately looking around [for a drink]. I just literally woke up one morning and said ‘that’s it’,” Joyce said.