Barnaby tells Turnbull: stop being a ‘sooky la la’

Malcolm Turnbull has been blasted by his former deputy Barnaby Joyce who said he needs to stop being a “sooky la la”.

Malcolm Turnbull has been blasted by his former deputy who said he needs to stop being a “sooky la la”.

Former leader of the Nationals and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has taken aim at the PM he served directly below for two years.

It comes after Mr Turnbull appeared at a senate inquiry into media diversity where he claimed he was bullied by News Corp, the owner of this masthead, while Prime Minister.

“If you don’t like it (politics) get out of it. Which, I suppose he did on his own volition, he decided to get out of politics. I want to talk about miserable ghosts. He has this quote which was for people who hung around the political field,” he told 2GB.

Malcolm Turnbull has been blasted by his former deputy.

Making his point.... Barnaby Joyce.

“Malcolm has been a continual commentator and I understand it is a thing in politics people get bitter and twisted about the fact they are no longer Prime Minister.

“It is just sooking. It is sooky, sooky, sooky la la land.”

The pair had a fiery relationship when working together in politics.

In 2018, Mr Turnbull spoke publicly about Mr Joyce’s conduct in fathering a child with his then media Adviser and now wife Vikki Campion.

He said the relationship was a “shocking error of judgment”.

Mr Joyce hit back only a day after the comments were published saying the then Prime Minister only added to the hurt.

“I have to say that, in many instances, they caused further harm,” he told this masthead in 2018.

NEW WAR CLAIMS ARE ‘BASELESS’

Malcolm Turnbull made a second appearance at a Senate inquiry into media diversity yesterday, attacking the publisher of this newspaper and its counterparts in the United States as enemies of the democratic process.

Mr Turnbull, who last week was dumped by the NSW government from the chair of a net-zero emissions board, blamed The Daily Telegraph in particular for reporting on his personal efforts to block the expansion of an open-cut coal mine near his Hunter Valley property.

The former prime minister (pictured) suggested he was the victim of a “vendetta” and that this newspaper was one-sided in its attacks on Labor.

Malcolm Turnbull at the media diversity public hearing. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

News Corp “does not hold the Morrison government to account … the government feels it is less accountable” to its media outlets, he said.

On the same day he testified, however, the front page of The Daily Telegraph featured a news story about the Morrison government’s disarray regarding the vaccine rollout.

Mr Turnbull also claimed News Corp, publisher of this newspaper, represented a “real threat to democracy”.

He suggested Fox News in the US, also owned by News Corp, bore much of the responsibility for the January 6 riot at the Capitol and warned that what he believed to be an excessive concentration of media ownership could potentially lead to similar events here.

“Fox News is like state-owned media in an authoritarian country,” Mr Turnbull said.

The former prime minister said that while he was not ­always supportive of royal commissions, “a thorough­going royal commission (would be) very worthwhile”.

Originally published as Barnaby tells Turnbull: stop being a ‘sooky la la’