07:45

Labor’s shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, has said that it is “clear the prime minister has lost all confidence in his deputy prime minister but is refusing to do the right thing and sack him”.



Dreyfus told reporters in Canberra the controversy “is not about Barnaby Joyce’s private life, it’s about his use of taxpayers’ money and ... his ministerial office”.

He said it was “extraordinary” that Malcolm Turnbull had said Joyce committed a shocking error of judgment and should consider his position.



Asked about the idea of banning sex between ministers and their staff in the ministerial code, Dreyfus says sex in the office “causes problems but there is a real difficulty in legislating for personal relations”.



Dreyfus did not commit Labor to support the change in the code, describing it as a “thought bubble” that was “a distraction from the prime minister’s extraordinary weakness in refusing to sack Barnaby Joyce from his position”.

