Which is what happened to Barnaby Joyce on Channel Seven's emergency Sunday night screening Home And Away last night. Or what might more properly be called What Barnaby Did While He Was Away (instead of at home with his wife and four daughters).

This episode had it all. Sappy music. Lots of tears. Sex before marriage. Adultery. Dark "scum-of-the-earth" conservative men pressuring an innocent woman to have an abortion. Embarrassing relatives. Hand squeezing. More tears. The power of love because apparently two grown-ups don't have agency.

But some have hypocrisy. Barnaby Joyce has been our Nationals guardian against same sex marriage, against promiscuity, against abortion, in fact famously announcing that preventing abortion was more important to the national interest than Telstra.

Here he is in 2004: "My own personal philosophy is anti-abortion, not anti the people who have had abortions, but anti the actual process. I think as a nation everyone would agree that a hundred thousand abortions a year is not a good spot for us to be as a nation and we've got to start looking at ways that we, you know, deal with that issue. It hurts the people who are part of it and it obviously hurts the child who it happens to."

Yet there he sat listening to his de facto wife Vikki Campion talk about her own considerations and responding: "I can understand people are under incredible pressure and I can't force my views on other people."

Saying that while spending decades in politics doing the opposite. Telling us not to be promiscuous. Telling us gay marriage would lead to the downfall of western civilisation.

It's Monday and Barnaby Joyce has not yet resigned from the seat of New England, although members of the National Party in the area can hardly wait.

"It's a matter of who's got the balls to do it," says one, imagining who might stand against Joyce in a preselection. I'm guessing he actually means spine unless there is an unspoken rule in the Nationals.

He observes that as soon as New England locals heard their member, Barnaby Joyce, was taking money for his tell-little interview with Channel Seven's Sunday Night, the corflutes came down. It had all been "I Back Barnaby" until news of the $150,000 made its way around the big regional seat. That, for them, was unforgivable.

It's unforgivable, no matter where you live.

That Joyce and his media-advisor-turned-mother-of-his -first son Vikki Campion decided to take money to tell their side of the story only highlights their entitled self-regard. That they tried to babywash the lucre by explaining it was going in to a trust for Sebastian, now six weeks old, shows a misjudgment of the electorate of New England and of the nation.

So it is time for Joyce to find another job; and that's exactly what locals are hoping. Perhaps he could return to his first job, accounting, in a new role at Hancock Prospecting, where he has existing relationships.

On Sunday night, in some of the private Facebook groups in the area, the mood was sour. If they'd known about the baby in time for the last byelection, there was absolutely no way they would have preselected Joyce. New England voted Yes for gay marriage but no way would it have backed a bloke who cheated on Natalie and her four gorgeous daughters.

Now, it's time for the locals to rise up. The question is, who on earth could take his place and how quickly can they get Joyce to go? As one New Englander asked last night, could he go in time for Super Saturday?

The answer is, not bloody likely.

Speaking of answers, there was one corker, when Joyce and Campion were discussing the story where he suggested he might not be the father of Seb. That was the only moment where a flash of Vikki Campion's grit emerged from the waves of "deeply hurt". They might have discussed the idea of Joyce talking to the press about the baby but not about calling his paternity a "grey area". "I didn't say use the words 'grey area'," said Ms Campion.

Alex Cullen, gun interviewer, asked most of the wrong questions last night. Here are some he missed.

Barnaby, how could you have spent the last 20 years telling the rest of us how to live our lives while happily cheating on your wife of 20 years? Why weren't you straight with Nationals preselectors in the run-up to the byelection you brought on yourself because you didn't know you were a dual national? Doesn't it embarrass you to be praised for knowing how to change a nappy since Sebastian is actually the fifth child you've had? And that's before we even get on to the question of what you did on the taxpayer dime. Barnaby, did you rip off the Australian public?

Alex, all of those are much more interesting questions than what Natalie said to her philandering husband's philanderee. I could have answered that myself on national television and not one of the words would have been new to me or to the Sunday night audience.

To be honest, I had a few moments of sympathy. The picture of Natalie at last year's Midwinter Ball in Canberra, the stiff upper lip of the spurned corporate spouse. And I also had sympathy for Campion. The poor woman is on national television six weeks after the birth of her baby. She says she's cried more than she's ever cried before. And that's on top of how it must feel being the partner of someone who has lost his reason for being, rural Australia's best retail politician. It cannot be easy to be living with a man who was once the centre of his universe and who is now fallen. His mood can hardly be perfect preparation for newborn fatherhood. Plus, whatever lustre his power bestowed him has now faded. He's just another forlorn backbencher with no serious hope of a return to a position of responsibility. No hope. Voters could only fear that what he did to his family life he might do to our country.

And how are you going to destroy every single digital copy of this interview so Sebastian never ever hears you say to a million Australians about your son: "You look at these two blue eyes staring up at the blue sky and staring back at you. And you look at Sebastian and you think, 'Boy, man, you caused some problems'."

Because it wasn't Sebastian who caused those problems, Barnaby. It was you.

Jenna Price is an academic at the University of Technology Sydney and a Herald columnist.