Private texts come back to haunt Barnaby Joyce on campaign trail

Explosive text messages Barnaby Joyce sent about Scott Morrison have come back to haunt him on the election campaign trail.

The leaked text messages in which Barnaby Joyce described Scott Morrison as a “hypocrite and a liar” have come back to haunt the Deputy Prime Minister on the campaign trail.

Mr Joyce “unreservedly apologised” to the Prime Minister after the messages emerged in February, for the withering character assessment he made in them in March 2021 before he returned to the front bench.

“He is a hypocrite and a liar from my observations and that is over a long time. I have never trusted him and I dislike how he earnestly rearranges the truth to a lie,” Mr Joyce wrote in the exchange.

Mr Joyce conceded the texts could be weaponised ahead of the May 21 poll as the opposition looks to capitalise on questions around Mr Morrison’s character.

Barnaby Joyce’s text messages could come back to haunt him on the campaign trail. Picture: Supplied

The election is expected to be fought, at least in part, on the respective personal qualities of Mr Morrison and Anthony Albanese.

Asked if he was prepared for the texts to appear in Labor advertising, Mr Joyce said that would make it an “ad hominem” campaign rather than one of “policy and delivery”.

“It’s very political and very clever, but it’s not really showing a proper respect to where the nation is,” he told the ABC from the Victorian electorate of Nicholls on Monday.

“Going back to something that’s a private message between two people and saying, ‘Wow, that’s our policy that we’re putting forward before the Australian people’ goes to show there’s not a great depth in what is the alternative form of government.”

Mr Joyce said he found Mr Morrison to be a person of conviction and one he could trust, who honoured every agreement they’d ever undertaken.

“My working relationship with him as the Deputy Prime Minister and he the Prime Minister has been one of respect, diligence and outcome,” he said.

It was a far cry from the description he used in the leaked text exchange, though Mr Morrison accepted Mr Joyce’s apology when it was offered in February