Joyce jumps as pressure builds
Deputy PM was under scrutiny over affair. Now he’s heading to Canberra’s back benches facing sexual harassment allegations
Barnaby Joyce hopes his resignation from the Nationals leadership will be a circuitbreaker for the Australian Government after 16 days of scandal. The latest twist in the saga surrounding the Deputy Prime Minister is an allegation of sexual harassment involving a West Australian woman in 2011, which will be referred to police and is the subject of an internal investigation by the Nationals.
Joyce, who has been on personal leave this week with his new partner and former staffer Vikki Campion, will officially quit as Nationals leader on Monday and go to the back bench.
“It’s incredibly important that there be a circuit-breaker, not just for the parliament but more importantly a circuit-breaker for Vikki, for my unborn child, my daughters and for Nat [Joyce’s wife]. This has got to stop,” he told reporters yesterday in Armidale, a New South Wales town in the New England electorate Joyce represents.
The MP has faced questions regarding jobs given to Campion and parliamentary expense use.
“Over the last half a month, there has been a litany of allegations. I don’t believe any of them have been sustained,” Joyce said.
“[But] to give these people in the weatherboard and iron, in those regional and small towns the best opportunity, this current cacophony of issues has to be put aside.”
Joyce denies the sexual harassment allegation but told reporters it was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.
On Wednesday, Joyce told Fairfax Media he would ride out the storm but
two days later he said it was “not hard at all” to decide to step down.
Joyce had not directly told Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull he is resigning but he said he spoke to Mathias Cormann, who is acting in the role while Turnbull is overseas.
Turnbull said the coalition between the Liberals and the Nationals is “undiminished” despite Joyce’s resignation.
“I thank Barnaby for his service as
Deputy Prime Minister and in his various ministerial roles in which he has been a fierce advocate for rural and regional Australia,” Turnbull said in a statement from the United States, where he is on a trade mission.
Cabinet minister Matt Canavan described Joyce as a mate who had helped save the coalition Government from a first-term defeat.
“Barnaby has made mistakes but I am sure he will recover, learn and be a
better person from them,” Canavan said.
“He now has a new partner and a new child to care for and that is much more important than any of his achievements in public life.”
Joyce’s resignation comes a week after Turnbull savaged his deputy in a news conference, calling his affair with Campion a “shocking error of judgment”.
Joyce hit back, describing the
Prime Minister’s criticism as “inept” and saying his comments were “causing further harm”.
Turnbull made the comments at the same time he overhauled the code of conduct for government ministers and barred them from having sexual relations with their staff.
The son of sheep and dairy farmers, Joyce has led the coalition’s rural-based partner the Nationals for two years.
He’s been a vocal critic of foreign investment by state-owned Chinese companies, and made international headlines in 2015 when he threatened to euthanise Johnny Depp’s Yorkshire terriers after the movie star brought the dogs into Australia without fulfilling proper quarantine procedures.
Before news of the scandal broke this year, Joyce, who was born in Australia, had been attempting to rebuild his reputation, damaged when he was ruled ineligible to remain Parliament after discovering he was also a citizen of New Zealand because his father was born here.
His absence meant the Government lost its majority for more than a month; after renouncing his dual citizenship, he easily won a special election in December and returned to Parliament.