Two-thirds of Australian voters want Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to resign following his extramarital affair with his former press secretary, a poll showed yesterday, adding pressure on a government already fractured by the scandal.
Joyce, a Catholic who campaigned on “family values” and who has been married for 24 years, refused to resign when it was made public that he was expecting a child with his former staffer.
About 65 percent of voters want Joyce to step down as leader of the rural-based National Party, the junior partner in the Australian government led by the Liberal Party, the Australian newspaper’s Newspoll showed.
The scandal has damaged the government’s re-election chances, according to Newspoll.
The government, which has only a one-seat majority, trails the main opposition Labor Party by a margin of 53-47 percent on a two-party basis.
The government must call an election by May next year.
With mounting public pressure, Joyce sought to turn the tide of public opinion, giving a rare interview yesterday with the Sydney Morning Herald, where he blamed public life for the breakdown of his marriage.
Joyce has began an unusual week-long leave of absence at the urging of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is this week to travel to Washington, which would have typically seen Joyce installed as acting prime minister.
Australian Minister of Finance Mathias Cormann is now to be acting leader.
In other developments, National Party Legislator George Christensen, who posted a photograph of himself on Facebook holding a gun in a jibe at environmentalists, was yesterday reported to police and slammed as insensitive after a mass US school shooting.
Christensen put up the image on Saturday showing him in a shooting stance with the comment: “You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, greenie punks?”
He said it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Dirty Harry film franchise, in which a police officer played by Clint Eastwood takes on “people who are conducting illegal activity, such as the greens are.”
Christensen later deleted the post, but responded defiantly, saying: “I’m not going to be moralized to by these extreme greens who put the livelihoods, safety and lives of other people at risk.”
Additional reporting by AFP
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