Editorial: PM Malcolm Turnbull has no choice on Joyce
FOR Labor’s shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus, the Barnaby Joyce situation is very simple.
Opinion
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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 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.
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 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.
“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.”
It’s Barnaby’s Law, but Turnbull’s phrasing recalls US president Bill Clinton’s dishonest 1998 denial of his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky: “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.
FACS may be beyond fixing
Magistrate Harriet Grahame spoke for all of NSW yesterday when considering Family and Community Services’ failure to protect at-risk children.
“I cannot get how as a community we are seeing so few children that need help. I don’t understand,” the magistrate said, after hearing that a FACS office had not visited 73 per cent of children in an area of Sydney where two infants in a drug-addicted family had died.
“That’s a broken system, isn’t it?” Magistrate Graham asked. Yes, it is. And it might require replacement rather than repair.
US guns make hard target
The Howard government’s 1996 gun buyback scheme took more than 650,000 firearms out of circulation.
In the wake of the latest horrific mass shooting in the US, where at least 17 people were killed in and around a Florida school, many will again ask why the US cannot follow Australia’s gun-control example.
It is a reasonable question, and it is asked with understandable grief and frustration. But even if the pro-gun culture in the US could be overcome, dreadful practical difficulties would remain.
If you think removing 650,000 guns is a big accomplishment, consider this. The US currently has more than 450 times that number of firearms throughout the population.
Basically, the number of guns in the US equals the number of people — about 300 million.
Australia’s buyback cost $500 million. A US buyback would run to more than $225 billion.
The solution to America’s ongoing domestic bloodbath must lie elsewhere — in firearm restrictions, increased penalties for even slight firearm violations and decreased sales.