"I'm disappointed [Helen Dale] chose to quit in the middle of a very intense campaign, but I expected her to leave after the election anyway," Senator Leyonhjelm wrote in the email dated May 28. Senator David Leyonhjelm Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "Helen is also quite good at social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter. I'm proposing the party hires [party founder] John Humphreys for this role. "He can do it from Brisbane and it would only be until the election. I suggest a lump sum figure of $5000 cash (half now, half at the end). We'll ignore tax etc. I could possibly put him on the taxpayer's payroll but it would be a lot of paperwork. I've discussed it with him and he's willing and available, and understands he's not driving the strategy. Senator Leyonhjelm, a libertarian who frequently rails against the high-taxing approach of the Coalition and Labor, told Fairfax Media on Monday that he was not going to "dignify" questions around the email with a response, saying there were "lots of options" when it comes to someone paying tax.

"You go and write whatever you like, make all your wrong assumptions and I will read it and laugh," he said. Senator Leyonhjelm does not suggest in the email that Ms Dale, who was being paid by the Commonwealth as a political staffer, is being replaced directly in her role by Mr Humphreys. "She is an excellent writer and a reliable copy-editor. I'm surrounded by staff who can't punctuate and who put capital letters in the wrong places, so I'm going to require someone for that role," he wrote. "I'm hoping I can hire someone on a short-term contract for the rest of the campaign. If you have any thoughts as to who might be suitable, let me know asap." Ms Dale, who grew up as Helen Darville, became famous at the age of 20 for writing the award-winning novel The Hand that Signed the Paper, which won the Miles Franklin Award in 1995.

She was plunged into controversy after it emerged that her pseudonym, Helen Demidenko, was not related at all to people and events in the book that she had claimed were based on real life. Bill Shorten also criticised Mr Leyonhjelm on Monday, labelling the senator a 'stone-age man' after he criticised a Labor pledge to fund the broadcast of more women's sport. Senator Leyonhjelm said if women's sport was more interesting it wouldn't need other people's money. Mr Shorten hit back, saying: "Back to the cave, stone-age man." With AAP