No ‘Gladys leave pass’ on personal life for me, says Barnaby Joyce

Barnaby Joyce says things ‘might’ve been different’ for his career if he’d received the same treatment as NSW’s Premier.

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce. Picture: AAP

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce says things “might have been different” for his career if he had received the same treatment as Gladys Berejiklian, and the NSW Premier had been “given a leave pass on her personal life”.

Mr Joyce, who with his partner Vikki Campion were cleared of misusing parliamentary expenses during their affair, told The Australian on Wednesday he wished he had been given the same concessions as Ms Berejiklian when it came to her former relationship with disgraced Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire.

Mr Joyce quit as deputy prime minister in 2018 after it was revealed he had left his wife to have a baby with Ms Campion, who had worked in his office as a media adviser.

“I wish they had approached my position as they approached Gladys,” he said.

“I would probably be in a different position if they had, but good luck to her.”

Ms Berejiklian was last week found to be romantically linked to Mr Maguire, who is accused of supporting false visa applications for Chinese nationals in exchange for thousands of dollars in cash, but has so far fended off calls to step aside.

She has repeatedly stated that she did not need to disclose her years-long relationship with Mr Maguire because it did not meet the definitional threshold of an “intimate” relationship defined within the NSW ministerial code of conduct.

Mr Joyce said there had been a “real jihad” against him on a personal level in the wake of his relationship with Ms Campion going public, which Ms Berejiklian had not been subject to.

“(She) has been given a leave pass on her personal life and I have no problems with that — that should be the standard process,” he said.

“I support her with the caveat that she has not breached her ministerial code.

“But if there’s anything found that associates malfeasance by Maguire to an action that she either undertook or failed to undertake, in which case it’s got nothing to do with her personal life and everything to do with possible corruption.”

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull banned his ministers from having sex with their staff in the wake of the Joyce affair, prompting the federal ministerial code of conduct to be rewritten to outlaw a minister engaging in sexual relations with staff.