If a ban on sex between ministers and staffers is good enough for Julie Bishop, it’s apparently good enough for Labor.
Bill Shorten has committed Labor to maintaining Malcolm Turnbull’s ban on sexual relationships between ministers and their aides, if it wins government – after praising Bishop for having “made some sense”.
Bishop, the deputy Liberal leader, had previously questioned the need to have the “moral police” examine relationships between consenting adults but, on Monday morning, said she would abide by the ministerial code of conduct.
Speaking in Townsville, Shorten said Labor would also follow suit, while maintaining it wasn’t the opposition’s main interest in the Barnaby Joyce controversy.
“If we get elected, we’re not going to overturn the code of conduct,” Shorten said. “But it’s not the main game, is it? The real issue is not the relationship; it’s the conflict of interest. It’s the very poor decisions made.
“This might surprise you but I thought Julie Bishop from London made some sense this morning. She said there is a role for private lives, for politicians to have a private life. She said she will have a go at this code of conduct; so will Labor.”
The ban has helped to distract from the larger issues afflicting the Coalition, as the Nationals attempt to answer the question of how to deal with Joyce.
The prime minister admitted his wife, Lucy, had been in contact with Joyce’s estranged wife, Natalie, during an interview on Monday morning, as he attempts to navigate the future of his government and his relationship with the deputy prime minister through the ongoing crisis.
The man most often touted as Joyce’s successor, Michael McCormack, briefly became the story on Monday when he was asked eight times before offering his personal support to his leader.
Barnaby Joyce is not a member of Malcolm Turnbull's Liberal party, he is the leader of the National party, which governs in coalition with the Liberals. In the same way that the prime minister could not sack the leader of the Labor party, he has no power to force the Nationals to change their leader.
There is a coalition agreement between the leaders about the terms of their political partnership. The agreement is secret, but one of its cornerstones is that the leader of the National party will be deputy prime minister when the Coalition is in government and therefore acting prime minister in the absence of the PM.
Turnbull could remove Joyce from the position of deputy prime minister by ending the Coalition between Liberals and Nationals. However, because the two parties combined only have a one-seat majority over Labor in the House of Representatives, that would be risky.
“This has, sure, been unfortunate, sure, been a distraction, but Barnaby Joyce is the leader, there is no spill, there is no vacancy at the moment and certainly Barnaby Joyce will be continue to be the leader as long as he gets the support of the National party room,” he told Sky on Monday morning.
“Barnaby Joyce, at the moment has the support of the National party. That is what matters. Barnaby Joyce has the support for us, because he has delivered very, very well for rural and regional Australia.”
Reports about the level of support for Joyce withn the National party varied, as players struggled to take control of the situation.
That wasn’t helped by the latest Newspoll, which showed two-thirds of voters, from both urban and regional electorates, thought Joyce should leave parliament, as the fallout from the affair drags into a second week.
But by late Monday, Joyce’s supporters were out in force, publicly defending their leader.
Queensland’s Michelle Landry told the ABC she had been in touch with her party colleagues over this past weekend, and she felt Joyce had majority support.
“He has been a good leader, he’s been a huge supporter for the regions,” Landry said. “He’s certainly assisted me a lot with getting projects off the ground, like the Rookwood Weir, so I think we need to give him another chance, and we’ve got this week to see what happens.”
Her Queensland colleague Llew O’Brien, suggested a Labor-led campaign may have been responsible for some of the anti-Joyce messages he had received, commenting the emails were all similar and left no contact details. He maintained his Wide Bay community supported Joyce.
“There are people who are obviously concerned about what is going on, but I am getting as many, if not more, who support Barnaby and think he is doing a good job and should continue doing a good job,” he told the ABC.
The former National party leader John Anderson, who served as deputy prime minister to John Howard for six years, intervened on Monday, telling party MPs, through the Australian, to act before the situation was “taken out of their hands”. He also had a message for Joyce.
“I would encourage him, while he is on leave, to clear his head and I say that as a friend who was his campaign chairman, to clear his head and to think this through very carefully indeed,” Anderson told the paper. “Because he has enormous responsibilities to his own family including his unborn son as well his party and the nation.”
Speaking later to the Daily Telegraph’s Facebook radio show, Anderson said the party had to accept the issue was not going to go away.
“The people who bear the responsibility now for sorting this out, are the people who belong to the party where the problem is, and it’s the National party,” he said. “And they have to be able to look to their constituents, the parliament, the media, with whatever their message is by the time parliament goes back, and say: ‘This is what we’ve done, this is why we’ve done it.”
Anderson said the National party needed to “restore functionality and the ability to govern properly again”.
“Australians do respect authenticity, if you really fess up and explain what you’ve done, what you think the consequences are and how you intend to address them, that might be one thing,” he said. “But let’s not kid ourselves … it won’t go away, no one can kid themselves it will go away, it isn’t.”
Anderson said whatever the decision of the Nationals party room, it had to be united.
“The party room … has to do it collectively. They have to be unified, they’ve got to reassure their senior Coalition party that they are on with the job and they have to be able to carry the Australian people,” he said.
The Australian Financial Review reported the party executives in the key states of Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales were planning a phone hook-up to discuss the situation.
Joyce remains on personal leave until Sunday and Nationals MPs will hold their next party room meeting the following day. Turnbull, who held his own crisis talks with Joyce last Saturday, after a public war of words erupted between the Coalition partners, leaves for the US on Wednesday.
