Australian Conservatives leader Cory Bernardi suggests others are in breach of PM’s code of conduct but doesn’t name them

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Cory Bernardi has claimed that Turnbull government ministers other than Barnaby Joyce are having a sexual relationship with a person on their staff after the revelation of Joyce’s affair with his former media adviser Vikki Campion.

While Joyce refused to step down as Nationals leader over the controversy, the leader of the Australian Conservatives stirred trouble for the Coalition by suggesting that others were in breach of Malcolm Turnbull’s code of conduct banning sex between ministers and their staff.

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Bernardi told Radio National on Tuesday that it was “self-evident” that ministers should not be sleeping with their staff “or anyone else’s staff for that matter”.

“But I would say that I don’t think Barnaby Joyce is Robinson Crusoe on this,” he said.

Bernardi said that Turnbull had “done what he thinks is right” although he did not personally think the ban was necessary.

“But then, self-evidently, the standards by which I’m holding myself, or which I expect of others, have not been met by those within some of the ministerial ranks, and I make this point that it’s not just Barnaby Joyce that we could be discussing.”

Asked to clarify if he was suggesting other ministers are having sexual relations with their staff, Bernardi said “yes” but refused to name them.

“We’ll leave that in the fullness of time, but it says to me that there is a problem there,” he said.

“There is a culture problem where people think that this is OK, and I read in this morning’s paper that [in] places like the military or the ADF, where there’s a relationship within a chain of command, either the chain of command ceases or the relationship ceases. That would seem common sense to me.”

At a doorstop on Tuesday Bill Shorten said he was not aware of any Labor frontbench MPs having sexual relationships with staff, nor “anyone in the government ranks either”.

Q&A Why can't Malcolm Turnbull sack Barnaby Joyce? Show Hide 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. Photograph: Michael Masters/Getty Images AsiaPac

The prime minister’s office did not respond to questions about whether Turnbull was confident that other ministers were compliant with the new rules.

At a doorstop on Friday, Turnbull said it was not his job “to go around and investigate every rumour and spend a lot of time doing that”.

“The time has come to draw a line in the sand and what I have done in the amendments to the ministerial standards, is set out my values and my standards that I expect my ministers to comply with henceforth,” he said.

Turnbull said he was not concerned with “history or archaeology of what may or may not have happened in the past” and that the new rules applied from 15 February.

The prime minister said the rules were “a very big cultural change in terms of the way parliament’s culture has operated”.

Turnbull conceded that he had “to rely on the integrity and the commitment of the ministers” to comply with the standards.

On Monday Turnbull acknowledged in an interview on 3AW that he had heard rumours about the liaison between the deputy prime minister and Campion but said he couldn’t remember precisely when he was first told.

“Parliament house ... is full of rumours. But ultimately, ministers have the obligation to comply with the ministerial code of conduct.”

Turnbull said that Joyce never confirmed the relationship with Campion and “the only way you can know, know that two people are in a sexual relationship, frankly, is if one or both of them confirm it”.

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“There are many, many rumours, there are many things that people claim to know.”

The prime minister’s office declined to answer questions about whether other ministers had been investigated or warned about sexual relationships with staffers.

When Turnbull announced the new rules on Thursday he said that ministers had to behave with “integrity and respect” towards “their staff, the staff of other ministers or members of the Australian public service”.

Turnbull held out the possibility he could make further changes to the ministerial code, but for now the rules only ban sex between a minister and his or her staff.