Andrew Bolt: Barnaby Joyce or Malcolm Turnbull must go
EITHER Malcolm Turnbull or Barnaby Joyce — Mr Weak or Mr Selfish — must quit to save their sinking government. Saturday’s “peace” talks were ludicrous, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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EITHER Malcolm Turnbull or Barnaby Joyce — Mr Weak or Mr Selfish — must quit to save their sinking government.
Forget Saturday’s ludicrous “peace” talks between the Prime Minister and his deputy.
Their agreement to soldier on together in the interest of Australians convinces no one. They’ve clearly got their own interests in mind.
Worse, this “peace” just make the Prime Minister seem even weaker after his attempts last week to shame Joyce into resigning.
Bottom line: the Turnbull Government cannot be taken seriously while both men are still there. Not after what they said about each other last week.
Not after Turnbull, “appalled” by the behaviour of his Deputy Prime Minister, said Joyce should consider resigning over his “shocking” affair with his staffer.
Not after the Nationals leader, who can be sacked only by his own party, in turn called his Prime Minister “inept” and effectively told him to get stuffed, saying Turnbull’s “implied intervention” just “locks (Nationals MPs) behind the leader”.
What a disaster. Why would Coalition voters support the Nationals now, when even Turnbull thinks they’re led by a shocker?
Why would they back the Liberals when even the Deputy PM thinks their leader is “inept”?
One must go.
Normally, in a brawl between a boss and his deputy, it’s the deputy who walks.
But here’s the problem. Each man is right about the other.
Of course, Joyce’s behaviour was shocking.
This campaigner for family values and the sanctity of traditional marriage didn’t just have an affair with his media adviser, Vikki Campion, who is now pregnant.
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER BARNABY JOYCE’S BETRAYAL IS A MORAL ISSUE
He didn’t just betray and humiliate the wife who, for two decades, put her own career on hold to help her husband soar, only to see him leave her at the peak of their joint success to share it with another woman.
Joyce also used taxpayers’ money to give his lover two jobs with other Nationals MPs when it got too hot for her in his office.
But Joyce, too, is right.
Turnbull is so inept that he has now turned a story about Joyce’s bonking into one about his own weakness and hypocrisy.
You see, Turnbull actually knew of Joyce’s affair with Campion last year, yet never said then that his deputy’s behaviour was so shocking that he should perhaps resign.
Instead, during the by-election for Joyce’s seat last December, he lauded Joyce as a “great friend, great partner” and a “hero”.
Back then he wasn’t trying to get his deputy sacked, but re-elected.
So no wonder Joyce was stunned last Thursday when — without warning — Turnbull publicly lit into him, announcing he was so “appalled” by Joyce’s “shocking” affair that he was banning ministers from sleeping with their staff.
This was a double betrayal.
Joyce had only just convinced his 20 Nationals MPs not to sack him, by arguing that the media would soon get bored with the scandal.
Yet Turnbull had blown that strategy to bits by playing the outraged moralist and trying to force Joyce into quitting by means of a public shaming.
How that backfired. Not only did Turnbull fail to blast out his deputy, he turned himself into the target.
He’d advertised his weakness, and also made himself seem a hypocrite by damning Joyce today for what he had himself covered up last year.
That’s why Turnbull fudges when asked just when he first knew of Joyce’s affair.
Here’s some of his disastrous press conference on Friday:
Journalist: So were you aware of the rumours (of Joyce’s affair) when you lauded him (last December)?
Turnbull: There was actually a front-page article in The Daily Telegraph prior to that … referring to that. I’m not going to go into the private discussions between me and Barnaby Joyce other than what I have said: that he did not come into my office and say, “Malcolm, I am having an affair with this woman.”
Count the loopholes.
So Joyce did not physically come into his office and specifically confirm what Turnbull clearly already knew.
And Turnbull won’t say when he knew it, and won’t explain what he told Joyce about it.
One word from Joyce on what really happened could destroy Turnbull.
No surprise, then, that Mr Weak and Mr Selfish now agree to stop brawling. Turnbull can’t sack Joyce anyway, but Joyce can sure sink Turnbull.
So, yes, normally Joyce should resign to save Turnbull’s government.
But why sacrifice himself to save a government led by a Prime Minister too inept to save himself?
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