Barnaby Joyce has shared two videos on social media of an apparent altercation between himself and a photographer outside a church.
The 51-year-old politician shared the videos on his Twitter page on Sunday morning, explaining he’d found a photographer hiding outside the church he’d just attended.
“Coming out of church, guess who is hiding in the bushes taking photos, yet won’t give his name or who he works for,” Joyce said. “We did the Sunday program to stop this, this is why we need a tort of privacy.”
In the first video, the photograph accused the former deputy PM of “threatening everyone” after Joyce tried to get the name of photographer and the publication he worked for.
In the second clip, Joyce asked the photographer why he didn’t respect his privacy.
“Why do you keep following me around?” he asked.
The photographer informed him it was his job, before Joyce asked the man who he worked for. The man then accused the politician again of trying to harm him.
“How can you seriously come out of church and size someone up to punch them?” the photographer asked.
Joyce denied he did, but the photographer wasn’t having any of it.
“Yes you did,” the photographer told Joyce. “You pulled your right hand back and if I hadn’t actually walked away you would have clubbed me.”
He then told Joyce to “go back to your regular job as a bouncer”.
As you may recall, Joyce once worked as a bouncer when he was a student at university.
Other witnesse where also captured on camera, asking why the photographer couldn’t simply let Joyce attend church without being hassled. The man then told the other church-goers that Joyce “basically threatened” him.
Joyce asked the man again what his name was, which seemed to upset him even more.
“I don’t have to identify myself to you,” he snapped back. “I kept my distance and basically you’ve come over and decided you’re gonna clock me.”
The video cut out there and at the time of publication, Joyce hasn’t updated his social media channels with any further updates. The argument comes after Joyce and his partner Vikki Campion appeared on Sunday Night last week as a way of stopping the growing interest around their relationship and their son, Sebastian Curtis Scott Joyce.
The pair defended the $150,000 they were paid for talking about their relationship on the current affairs show, claiming that everyone else was making money out of their baby so they decided he should also benefit from some of their notoriety.