‘I don’t support you’: Barnaby Joyce’s daughter blasts dad over abortion views

Odette Joyce has criticised her father's involvement in an anti-abortion rally outside NSW Parliament this week Source: Instagram - Odette Joyce/Getty

The daughter of former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has called out her father on social media in the wake of his involvement in an anti-abortion rally outside NSW Parliament this week. It’s been a controversial week for the former Nationals leader, who took to the streets of Sydney on Tuesday alongside thousands of Australians, to voice his opinion on the potential changes to abortion legislation after the final vote on the bill in NSW’s Upper House was delayed until next month.

Extreme footage shared by Channel 7’s morning program Sunrise on Wednesday morning showed the controversial pollie standing on a platform over the flurry of protestors shouting his views for all to hear. With signs reading “pro-life” and “pro-child” surrounding him, Joyce yelled out: “It was a person and that person has rights, that person does not deserve to die in the corner of a room if it’s born alive. It deserves to be fought for, it deserves to be loved. And if someone says ‘well I want my right to kill that baby’, sorry you can’t have that right.”

The politician has since received a lot of criticism for his actions with many taking to social media to express their thoughts on his attendance at the protest, including his daughter. Odette Joyce, whom he shares with ex-wife Natalie Joyce, has slammed her father by sharing a screen grab of an article regarding Tuesday’s protest antics on her Instagram story, with the icy caption: “Once again I do not support you.”

Odette Joyce criticises her father’s involvement in an anti-abortion rally outside NSW Parliament this week. Source: Instagram – Odette Joyce

Joyce is rarely pictured with his four daughters from his first marriage, having welcomed two babies with his new partner Vikki Campion over the last few years. And this isn’t the first time the former deputy prime minister has been vocal on abortion, with Joyce coming under fire earlier this week after Australians received unsolicited anti-abortion robocalls from him. The message from the politician was played on the Today show on Tuesday morning with Joyce heard claiming the proposed bill “legalises abortion for any reason right up to the day of birth”.

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“Please don’t #robocall me @BarnabyJoyce,” one person wrote on Twitter. “You have no authority on the NSW legislation regarding abortion. Your opinion has been weighed, measured, and found wanting.” While another said: “Who paid for @BarnabyJoyce to robocall us in NSW with false information about abortion? No woman wants to answer her phone and hear a man at the other end spewing that vile misinformation.”

This followed a post on social media earlier this month from Joyce who wrote on Twitter: “I have a real problem with a law that allows a perfectly healthy full-term baby to be aborted because two doctors say it’s okay, yet NSW’s legislation allows exactly this.” The politician also asked for followers to sign a petition with Support Life to demand a proper inquiry into the matter.

Meanwhile, Joyce also delivered a passionate speech in parliament in which he referenced the rights of his baby son to slam the bill and what it means for those around NSW. “On the 1st of June, Vikki’s and my son Tom took his first breath. This was not the start of his life,” the former deputy prime minister explained. “The reality is he was part of this world for some time and was merely passing from one room to another.”

Joyce argued his son had rights long before he was born and no person, doctor or parliament, had the power to take that away. “Inside the womb, Tom kicked, punched, grabbed his umbilical cord, felt pain, slept and dreamed,” he added. “With ultrasound he was most certainly seen in real human form. To say he didn’t have the rights of other human life is to say he must be sub-human.”

He continued: “I don’t believe that any person, any doctor, any parliament, has the power today to declassify another person as less than human, and by so doing removing their fundamental right to be alive. In the NSW parliament they are debating whether Tom had no classification of human rights. Whether before his umbilical cord was cut, he was subhuman.”

Joyce was slammed for his comments online at the time, with one Twitter user writing: “Shut up and go away,” while another added: “You’re a grub.” Meanwhile, a third wrote: “It’s a woman’s right to make her own choices, not yours or anybody else’s. You have your beliefs, let women have theirs.”

However others supported him, with one writing: “Well said Barnaby, hopefully some of your colleagues also have the courage to speak up and defend those innocents who cant do it for themselves. Ignore the haters!” Another added: “I am a female and I am saying that abortion is murder.”

After being inundated with backlash online, Joyce later took to Twitter to support his argument against the bill, writing: “In politics you have to fight the hard fights not just easy ones. I believe the other side of this debate is not being heard and I have a duty to ventilate it. This legislation must go to a committee so others can have the same right, to ventilate an alternate view.”

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