BARNABY’S LAW
Malcolm Turnbull cannot fire Barnaby Joyce, so he’s banned sex instead.
Malcolm Turnbull cannot fire Barnaby Joyce, so he’s banned sex instead.
Here is this morning’s Daily Telegraph editorial:
For Labor’s Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, the Barnaby Joyce situation is very simple.
“It’s clear the prime minister has lost all confidence in his deputy,” Dreyfus said yesterday, during one of the strangest sitting days in recent parliamentary history, “but he’s refusing to do the right thing and sack him.”
From Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s point of view, however, the entire situation is far more difficult. For a start, Joyce is the leader of the National Party. He cannot be fired by the leader of the Liberal Party. As long as the convention holds that the Nationals leader will be deputy in a Coalition government, Turnbull cannot do anything about it.
The notion that both Coalition partners have authority across parties is a common one, by the way. In 2015, for example, the ABC’s Fran Kelly enjoyed an informative on-air exchange with the current deputy PM.
Kelly: “Barnaby Joyce, as deputy National Party leader, as Agriculture Minister, did you vote for Tony Abbott or Malcolm Turnbull?”
Joyce: “I’m in the National Party.”
So now we’ve at least got that straight. And this much is clear, too: because Turnbull cannot fire Joyce, he has banned sex between ministers and their staff. This is an outcome very few could have foreseen when the Daily Telegraph last week exclusively broke the story of Joyce's affair and impending fatherhood.
Ministers can no longer shag their staff. This will be known as Sharri's Law.
— Caroline Overington (@overingtonc) February 15, 2018
“Barnaby made a shocking error of judgment in having an affair with a young woman working in his office. In doing so he has set off a world of woe for those women and appalled all of us,” the PM said yesterday.
“He is taking leave next week. And I’ve encouraged him to take that leave. I think he needs that leave. He needs that time to reflect.”
The PM has obviously been doing some reflection of his own, because his statement built to a remarkable conclusion.
“I am making today some changes to the ministerial standards,” Turnbull said. “I have today added to the standards to make a very clear and unequivocal provision; ministers, regardless of whether they are married or single, must not engage in sexual relations with staff.”
Julie Bishop on the proposed #bonkban: "Government has no business interfering into people's personal lives and we wouldn't want to cross the line so that the moral police were able to dictate what happens between consenting adults." #auspol
— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) February 8, 2018
It’s Barnaby’s Law, but Turnbull’s phrasing recalls US president Bill Clinton’s dishonest 1998 denial of his affair with intern Monica Lewsinky: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
Two decades later, it is obvious the deputy PM learned very little from that infamous episode.