Barnaby Joyce controversy needs swift resolution, Warren Truss says - Guardian

Barnaby Joyce controversy needs swift resolution, Warren Truss says

Reports emerge that delegation of Nationals will ask deputy prime minister to stand aside

Katharine Murphy and Paul Karp

Tue 13 Feb 2018 20.10 AEDT Last modified on Tue 13 Feb 2018 20.12 AEDT

Barnaby Joyce watches Malcolm Turnbull answer questions about whether the he still has full confidence in his deputy during question time.

Barnaby Joyce watches Malcolm Turnbull answer questions about whether the he still has full confidence in his deputy during question time. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

The former Nationals leader Warren Truss says the Barnaby Joyce furore needs to be resolved “constructively and quickly” as reports emerged that a delegation was being formed to urge the beleaguered deputy prime minister to stand aside for the good of the government.

Truss told the ABC on Tuesday night a decision about whether Joyce continued to lead the Nationals was a matter for his parliamentary colleagues, but he noted the deputy prime minister had been “diminished” by rolling controversy over his private life, and speedy resolution was now required.

Truss said Joyce had “enormous capabilities” and could remain in his current role. But, noting the distractions that had blown the government off-course during 2017, the former party leader said the controversy needed to be resolved “constructively and quickly so that the business of government can proceed”.

Barnaby Joyce saga 'not going to end well', Cory Bernardi says – as it happened

While some Nationals sources discount the idea that the party room numbers are there to roll Joyce if he digs in, arguing the current positioning against him is limited to a handful of disaffected colleagues, the ABC has reported that senior party figures have been approached to form a delegation to ask the deputy prime minister to step down.

Joyce spent Tuesday in full-blown damage control, apologising to colleagues at the regular Coalition party room meeting, and making a public statement of regret to both his estranged wife, Natalie, his four daughters, to his former staffer and now pregnant partner, Vikki Campion, and to voters in New England.

In Tuesday’s party room meeting, Joyce said every political career had a “time of trial”, but he told colleagues he was determined to work through the controversy.

The clock is ticking on the resolution of the issue, with Malcolm Turnbull due to leave the country next week, which would make Joyce the acting prime minister – a development some hard heads regard as politically untenable.

Earlier in the day, the Victorian National Darren Chester – who was dumped from Cabinet by Joyce in an acrimonious reshuffle last year – confirmed publicly there had been a “robust discussion” about Joyce’s travails at Monday’s meeting of National MPs, and he said he fully accepted the controversy was “a distraction and a problem for us”.

At an impromptu doorstop in Canberra on Tuesday evening, the minister for veterans affairs, New South Wales National Michael McCormack, did not answer questions about whether the party had lost confidence in Joyce and whether colleagues would move against him, but denied that he had spoken to the deputy prime minister directly about standing down.

Attending an Our Watch domestic violence event in Canberra, the Victorian Nationals MP Andrew Broad caused a scene by accidentally playing a video of a news story about the Nationals’ leadership woes from the audience during Bill Shorten’s speech at the event.

After the event, Broad refused to comment on Joyce’s future because “tonight is about Our Watch and reducing the incidence of family violence”, counselling journalists to report on that rather than the Nationals leadership.

“This is an issue about family violence … as the father of a step-daughter I want to ensure that when she grows up she meets a nice bloke who’s going to look after her – thank you. Nice try everyone.”

Labor used question time to focus again on whether the appointment of Campion to ministerial offices during 2017 represented a breach of the ministerial code of conduct, which explicitly forbids ministers employing their partners and also forbids the partners of ministers being employed in other minister’s offices without “the prime minister’s express approval”.

While expressing confidence in Joyce, Turnbull again made it plain that the responsibility for the staff appointments in the National party rested at the feet of Joyce himself.

Barnaby Joyce denies improper behaviour at function and breaches over Vikki Campion

The prime minister also continued to insist that Campion was not Joyce’s partner, noting that the ministerial code didn’t define the term. He cited definitions used by government departments that the partnership threshold was triggered by cohabitation.

Turnbull said Labor had not been able to establish a breach of the ministerial standards, or an alleged breach, despite two days of parliamentary questions.

An analysis of Joyce’s expenses in the first nine months of 2017 reveals that he has claimed $16,690 in travel allowance for a total of 50 nights in Canberra during non-sitting days, including 10 days as acting prime minister and 40 days on official business as deputy prime minister.

Combined with the 62 nights on days that parliament was sitting, the expense claims suggest Joyce spent a total of 112 days in Canberra out of the 272 days in the period examined.