Malcolm Turnbull should go before Christmas, NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro says

NSW National Party leader and Deputy Premier John Barilaro has said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should quit and “go before Christmas as a Christmas gift” to Australians. But his boss, Gladys Berejiklian, hung him out to dry.

NSW National Party leader and Deputy Premier John Barilaro has said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should quit and “go before Christmas as a Christmas gift” to Australians.

Speaking on radio this morning, Mr Barilaro told 2GB’s Alan Jones he no longer supports Mr Turnbull as Prime Minister.

He said Mr Turnbull had no chance of winning the next election and had lost the support of his partyroom over his backflip over a banking Royal Commission.

NSW Nationals Leader John Barilaro has called on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to quit before Christmas.

“My view is Turnbull should give … a Christmas gift and go before Christmas,” he said.

Mr Barilaro said “desperation” has led him to call on the PM to stand down with the decision yesterday to announce a Royal Commission into the banks the final straw.

Thank God for the NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro.

He's identified the elephant in the room. And he's saying publicly what Turnbull's colleagues are saying privately. pic.twitter.com/2LxbYq6P54

— Alan Jones (@AlanJones) November 30, 2017

He described the PM as “out of touch” and the reason the federal government is in disarray.

“Turnbull is the problem. The prime minister is the problem. He should step down and allow for a clean out of what the leadership looks like federally,” he said.

The NSW Deputy Premier’s views were not shared by Premier Gladys Berejiklian who said the PM continued to have “my full and absolute support.”

“Mr Barilaro has expressed a personal view which I do not share”, she said. “Mr Barilaro is well aware of my position.

“I look forward to continuing to work with the Turnbull Coalition Government to deliver a better quality of life for the people of NSW.

“Bill Shorten’s Labor Party is the biggest risk to our nation’s future.”

Mr Turnbull, pictured in Canberra yesterday, said Mr Barilaro had never raised his grievances with him before in person. Picture Kym Smith

NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley called Mr Barilaro an “ordinary piece of work”

“He’s a lion on the Alan Jones show but he’s a meek lamb in the cabinet room,” Mr Foley said.

Mr Turnbull brushed off the comments and denied his time was running out. He suggested the deputy premier made those comments to “ingratiate” himself with Jones and to tell him what he wants to hear.

“If that was a serious view he held, you would think he would speak to me directly, wouldn’t you?” he told Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW radio. “If I had a view about a state leader of that kind, I would express it - if I expressed it at all - privately and face-to-face, I wouldn’t be bagging them in the media like that.”

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The prime minister said Mr Barilaro had made similar comments a little while ago and that he called him and left a message about it, but didn’t get a call back. “He’s got my number, he can call me anytime. I’d be delighted to have a chat to him.” Cabinet minister Mathias Cormann labelled Mr Barilaro’s comments “very unhelpful”.

“Obviously it would’ve been better if he hadn’t,” he told Sky News.

‘I think, in my view, there’s been a complete lack of leadership’... Andrew Broad.

The PM denied he was irritated by Mr Barilaro’s comments, but criticised his timing ahead of the New England by-election tomorrow.

“We have a National Party by-election on Saturday in New England, so Mr Barilaro should perhaps reflect on whether his remarks are going to be helpful for Barnaby, and of course we have a by-election for a Liberal, John Alexander, here in Bennelong on the 16th,” Mr Turnbull said.

Mr Turnbull said he was confident both men would win, but the contest would be “challenging”.

“By-elections are always challenging but we’ve got two great candidates in Barnaby and John Alexander and we’re working very hard to make sure they’re re-elected,” he said.

In October, Mr Barilaro accused the PM of being “soft” in the energy debate and being too “pro-renewables”.

Just this week, Nationals backbencher Andrew Broad accused Mr Turnbull of a failure of leadership, in another sign of growing tensions inside the federal Coalition.

Mr Broad spoke out after conservative senators had a range of amendments to the same sex marriage legislation slapped down in the upper house.

“I think, in my view, there’s been a complete lack of leadership,” Mr Broad told ABC radio.

More to come