Aus deputy PM under fire over affair

PRESSURE was mounting on Australia’s deputy prime minister yesterday amid fresh allegations that his affair with a younger former staffer, who is pregnant with their child, breached ministerial rules.

Barnaby Joyce has been under intense scrutiny since the relationship was splashed across the front page of Sydney’s

last week, with his wife of 24 years making clear she and their four daughters were devastated.

He made a public apology to them yesterday and defended the two jobs, one for a minister, that his 33-year-old lover Vikki Campion was given after she stopped working for him last year.

Joyce – internationally renowned for threatening to euthanise Hollywood star Johnny Depp’s dogs over a quarantine violation – denied he breached the ministerial code of conduct. It stipulates that “partners” of ministers cannot be given jobs in ministerial offices without the express approval of the prime minister.

“I am very aware of the ministerial code of conduct,” Joyce, head of the National Party which is in a coalition with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals, told reporters in Canberra.

“It is without a shadow of a doubt that Vikki Campion is my partner now. But when she worked in my office, she was not my partner. When she worked in [Resources Minister] Matt Canavan’s office, she was not my partner.”

The growing scandal has seen the Labor opposition question whether it is tenable for Joyce to continue in his position.