Joyce hits at Turnbull

FORMER deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has accused Malcolm Turnbull of “throwing him under the bus” and causing turmoil in the Liberal Party.

Mr Joyce (below), who was forced to resign earlier this year after having an extramarital affair with an employee, said the former prime minister was poisoning the Coalition government ahead of next year’s federal election.

“One of our big problems was Malcolm Turnbull ... the person who threw me under the bus,” he told Sky News yesterday.

“He just started delivering this – almost this poisonous, incendiary approach now – in the assistance of trying to deliver us to opposition.”

Mr Joyce is still furious at Mr Turnbull for publicly denouncing his extramarital affair with Vikki Campion, who later had his baby and remains his new partner.

He is also angry at Mr Turnbull for walking away from Parliament after losing the leadership in August, and for supposedly not campaigning vocally enough for the Liberal Party candidate in the byelection for his former seat of Wentworth.