Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday banned sex between ministers and staff and rounded on his deputy for a “shocking error of judgment” by having an affair with a press secretary.
Deputy Australian Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, a Catholic who campaigned on “family values” and married for 24 years, is expecting a child with his former staffer in April.
Turnbull denounced the affair at a press conference in Canberra after a week in which the scandal threw his centre-right government into turmoil and strained the alliance between his Liberal Party and Joyce’s National Party.
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He stopped short of sacking Joyce, which would have put the government’s narrow one-seat majority at risk were he expelled from parliament. But Turnbull said the scandal had prompted overdue changes to ministerial conduct rules, and announced new standards broadly similar to a ban on relationships between lawmakers and staffers adopted last week by US Congress.
“In 2018, it is not acceptable for a minister to have a sexual relationship with somebody who works for them. It is a very bad workplace practice. And everybody knows that no good comes of it,” he said.
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