A former Australian deputy prime minister has laughed off a video of him rolling around on a Canberra footpath at night, while he kept talking on the phone.
Footage of Barnaby Joyce, 56, shows him mumbling on the ground after falling off a planter pot, the Daily Mail Australia reported on Friday.
A member of the public recorded Joyce's antics on Lonsdale St, in Braddon late on Wednesday night. Joyce lives in a nearby apartment.
The witness told the Daily Mail the Australian National Party MP was sitting on a planter, speaking to his wife on the phone, when he fell.
"If I had known someone was there with a camera, I would have got up quicker," Joyce said.
He added he was "embarrassed".
"I was walking back to my accommodation after Parliament rose at 10pm," he told the Daily Mail.
"While on the phone I sat on the edge of a plant box, fell over, kept talking on the phone, and very animatedly was referring to myself for having fallen over."
There are now growing calls for the veteran politician to quit.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday that Joyce was in "clearly difficult circumstances".
Political author Jenny Hocking asked: "Is this the standard [Australian opposition leader] Dutton accepts in his front bench?"
Meanwhile, Joyce's wife, Vikki Campion, said she was "half asleep" on the phone call, and was disappointed nobody helped him.
"It’s disgusting that when he was in need they could not even check he was OK," she told Australian media.
Campion said Joyce wasn't talking about her when he blurted out "dead f**king c**t" on the phone.
"I think he was calling himself one."
The witness, however, said Joyce appeared "relaxed and happy lying on the side of the road and didn't appear to require any assistance".
It's not the first time Joyce's antics have attracted public attention.
In 2021, during Question Time in Parliament, he appeared to slur his words while speaking on infrastructure in regional NSW.
And in 2018 he was ousted as deputy prime minister after a sexual harassment complaint was laid against him.
