Pressure was mounting on Australia’s deputy prime minister on Tuesday amid fresh allegations that his affair with a younger former employee, who is pregnant with their child, breached ministerial rules.
Barnaby Joyce has been under intense scrutiny since the relationship was splashed across the front page of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph last week, with his wife of 24 years making clear she and their four daughters were devastated.
He public apologised to them on Tuesday and defended the two jobs, one for a minister, that his 33-year-old lover Vikki Campion was given after she stopped working for him last year.
It stipulates that “partners” of ministers cannot be given jobs in ministerial offices without the express approval of the prime minister.
“I am very aware of the ministerial code of conduct,” Joyce, head of the National Party which is in a coalition with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals, told reporters in Canberra. “It is without a shadow of a doubt that Vikki Campion is my partner now. But when she worked in my office, she was not my partner. When she worked in [Resources Minister] Matt Canavan’s office, she was not my partner.”
