The acting prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has refused to apologise to his political rival Tony Windsor during a radio interview as the race for the seat of New England gets personal.
News Corp Australia publications on Thursday reported that Windsor had instructed his lawyers to demand an apology from Joyce for implying that he sold part of his property to a Chinese coalmining company.
Joyce denies having made the comments. “This is in the hands of the solicitors,” the Nationals leader told ABC Radio. “I’m not going to start going through the process of litigation on air.
“It’s very unfortunate. I don’t believe in a sort of litigious type of arrangement, but that’s where we’ve ended up.”
He brushed aside the chances of litigation. “Just because someone threatens you to say: you have to apologise for this, you have to apologise for that – doesn’t mean that’s what happens, does it?” Joyce said.
The MP resoundingly won the seat of New England, in northern New South Wales, after Windsor retired at the 2013 federal election. Windsor, a longtime MP for New England, had faced some discontent among voters for helping Julia Gillard and Labor to form government in the 2010 hung parliament.
But Windsor remains a popular figure and last month he announced he would recontest the seat. Some polling suggests Joyce could lose it.
Joyce has often raised the fact that Windsor made a huge windfall from selling part of his farming property to his next-door neighbour, Werris Creek Coal. Windsor denies he sold the land to foreign nationals.
“To be clear, I have not sold land to Chinese interests and, contrary to the misinformation Mr Joyce is spreading, I have never owned or sold a coalmine to anyone,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
Joyce said: “Mr Windsor should answer for himself. I’m not here to answer for him, or make excuses for him. He can go on air and do that.”
The MP became leader of the Nationals in February, after Warren Truss announced his retirement. The leader of the Nationals also holds the position of deputy prime minister in a Coalition government.
Joyce took on the mantle of acting prime minister late on Wednesday night, when Malcolm Turnbull left Australia for his first official visit to China.
