Barnaby Joyce has blamed his split with wife Natalie on long separations, and says partners should be permitted to work in political offices if they have the qualifications, and they want to.
Joyce – who quit the Nationals leadership and went to the backbench after it was confirmed publicly that he was in a relationship with a former political staffer – told the ABC that partners should be present as much as possible.
“Canberra is a weird place,” the former Nationals leader said. “It’s like a big old boarding school up on a hill in the middle of Canberra ... and we should be allowing partners as much as possible to be there as well.
“Otherwise you have this dysfunctional dichotomy where you have one life in Canberra, another life at home ... [and] after a decade it just does not work and things fall apart. I don’t want that to happen again.”
He said if partners were “qualified to do the job, if they have the qualifications, then why not allow them to do it?”
Joyce said he did not believe his former wife would have wanted to work with him, and he said his current partner, Vikki Campion, who gave birth to their son Sebastian last week, would not want to return to his office, “but it is insane to think that if she did want to work for me, she couldn’t”.
Joyce’s rationale was rejected by his former ministerial colleague Michael Keenan, who said the rules were changed a couple of years ago for a reason. “It’s not best practice for people to be employing their family members in any workplace, quite frankly,” Keenan said on Monday.
As well as the ban on employing family members, the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has also imposed a ban on ministers having sexual relationships with their staff – which was a response to Joyce’s relationship with Campion.
Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
