Cracks widen in Australian coalition
Deputy PM Joyce rejects PM’s call to resign over affair with staff member
Amajor rift opened up in Australia’s fragile ruling coalition yesterday as Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce refused to quit over an affair with a staff member, and derided Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s condemnation of his behaviour as “inept”.
Turnbull, whose coalition holds a razor-thin majority of just one seat, said on Thursday Joyce had shown a “shocking error of judgement” in conducting an affair with his former press secretary, who is now pregnant, and called on his deputy to consider his position.
The comments were seen as a thinly veiled call for the National Party leader to resign from cabinet, but Joyce, a married father of four who had campaigned on “family values”, said yesterday he had the support of his colleagues to continue.
Joyce leads the rural-based National Party, the junior partner in the centre-right government led by Turnbull’s Liberal Party, a political alliance that has existed since 1923. “Comments by the prime minister yesterday at his press conference, I have to say that in many instances, they caused further harm,” Joyce told a press conference in Canberra.
“I believe they were in many instances inept and most definitely in many instances unnecessary ... All that is going to do is basically pull the scab off for everybody to have a look at.”