Barnaby Joyce on leave, Mathias Cormann to be acting PM
BARNABY Joyce will go on leave next week — as the scandal surrounding his affair, pregnant mistress and rent-free accommodation deepens — rather than stepping into the Prime Minister’s role.
NSW
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BARNABY Joyce will go on leave next week — as the scandal surrounding his affair, pregnant mistress and rent-free accommodation deepens — rather than stepping into the Prime Minister’s role.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today announced Mr Joyce will take leave from next week instead of stepping into the top job as Mr Turnbull flies to the US.
Mr Turnbull declined to say why the Deputy Prime Minister was taking leave, which will start Monday and end on Sunday.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann will be acting prime minister from next Wednesday with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, the deputy Liberal leader, also overseas.
The dumping comes as Mr Joyce found himself at odds with his millionaire “mate” Greg Maguire’s account of how he and his staffer-turned-partner came to live in a luxury Armidale apartment free of charge, with Labor and the independent MPs pursuing him over the scandal.
The Deputy Prime Minister this morning provided a lengthy explanation for his conduct as Labor demanded he resign, claiming he had encouraged a “gift” — and continued to benefit from it — in breach of Ministerial Standards.
“After it became apparent with the deliberations of the High Court that I was no longer a member of parliament … Mr Maguire approached me, as did many other friends, approached me, to offer support,” Mr Joyce said.
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“I took him up on the offer but I offered to pay for it. He said basically “mates don’t pay for things when they’re helping other mates out” and that’s precisely what happened.”
But in earlier comments made to The Daily Telegraph and separately to The Australian newspaper, Mr Maguire said it was Mr Joyce who had approached him.
“Because he knows I own a lot of buildings, he said have I got anything available,” Mr Maguire, a Tamworth businessman and Nationals donor with a long association with Mr Joyce, told the Telegraph on Sunday.
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“He wanted to rent the apartment for a few months and I said, ‘I’m happy to let you stay there until you sort yourself out’,” he said.
“In my heart, all I was doing was helping a mate out, giving him somewhere to live after he’d split up.”
Mr Maguire separately told The Australian: “He asked me because we are mates and he knew I had property around town. This apartment was empty at the moment and there is no way I would have said no.”
The rent on the apartment is estimated to be about $460 per week, but was waived for Mr Joyce and his partner Vikki Campion, his former media adviser.
The six-month rent-free period is worth about $14,000.
A spokesman for Mr Joyce said there had been “periodic use of the apartment throughout the by-election campaign which would be routinely declared in the October electoral returns”.
The six-month agreement began on December 3, he said.
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