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  ‘It’s not me,’ Christensen told one journalist. He repeated the denial to another.11 Yet the impression of a coordinated move against Turnbull grew when the New South Wales Nationals leader and Deputy Premier, John Barilaro, told 2GB host Alan Jones the Prime Minister should step down. ‘Turnbull is the problem, the Prime Minister is the problem,’ he said, after being egged on by Jones. ‘You’ve got a party in disarray, a Coalition government in disarray and a community not unified and that is all at the feet of the Prime Minister of Australia.’ Turnbull dismissed it as an attempt by the Deputy Premier to ‘ingratiate’ himself with the 2GB host, but the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, Sally Cray, was not so measured when she called Barilaro’s chief of staff to savage his boss.12 The stench of a leadership crisis was strong, even if the odour came only from parts of the media and a few Nationals.

  Only after the by-election did Bolt reveal Christensen’s empty threat. ‘George Christensen wimps it,’ he wrote the morning after the Joyce victory.13 ‘Nationals MP George Christensen privately told me, Peta Credlin and Cory Bernardi that he would quit the Turnbull Government if Malcolm Turnbull was still Prime Minister this week. Twice more he urged me on, even after lying to Samantha Maiden of Sky News, telling her he was not the MP I’d referred to. I cannot now trust his word. He also damaged the government without actually following through with serious intent. He should either have said nothing or done everything.’

  It was another example of the eagerness in the conservative media to amplify every threat to Turnbull, to turn every idle boast into a deadly danger, to make a leadership spill look imminent because they wanted one so badly. Conveniently, the timing meant the test for Joyce in New England became a test for Turnbull instead. The failure of this fake crisis was a minor setback. They would keep trying.

  Joyce seemed invincible, a leader exulting in public triumph and betraying no hint of his private troubles. His success in New England, a swing of 7.2 per cent in his favour, made him even more certain of his own authority but made his colleagues even more wary of his excesses. The first sign of this gulf between the leader and his team came five days after the by-election, when the Nationals met in Parliament House to choose a deputy to replace Nash, who had left the Senate with no easy way to return. Joyce wanted the job to go to Canavan, a trusted friend and a Queenslander who could count on support from his colleagues in the north. Joyce received a snub instead. In a victory for the south, Victorian Senator Bridget McKenzie, an assistant minister, was elected deputy leader and soared to a certain place in federal cabinet. It was skilful work by her state ally and numbers man, Darren Chester, the Infrastructure Minister, but it gave cabinet rank to two Victorians in a party full of jealous Queenslanders.

  Could Joyce accept this vote? He had no choice. The only way he could deal with this defiance was to assert his control in the reshuffle of the ministry in the weeks ahead. He could promote his favourites and punish his detractors.

  As the vote on same sex marriage ended, the Nationals watched Joyce for any hint he would reveal the break-up of his marriage. They listened to his words in Parliament, on the same day McKenzie became deputy, and thought he was preparing to tell the full story. I acknowledge that I’m currently separated, so that’s on the record. They were astonished when he went no further. There was no attempt to explain his personal upheaval. Yet Joyce and Campion knew the baby was due in five months.

  The Assistant Trade Minister, Keith Pitt, an engineer and cane farmer from Bundaberg, believed the silence was foolish. The tale would be told sooner or later. He called the Nationals federal director, Ben Hindmarsh, into his office to find out whether anyone had a plan to deal with a sex scandal.

  ‘I don’t give a crap about what he does in his private life,’ Pitt said. ‘But the story is running up and down the Press Gallery. All I want to know is that you’ve got a strategy to manage it.’ The warnings went unheeded. The only dividend for Pitt was a black mark against his name as Joyce pondered the coming reshuffle.

  The jubilation over Joyce’s return to Parliament faded over time. Everyone knew the real test of the government’s fortunes was in the suburbs, not the bush, and that Turnbull had to show he could hold the Sydney electorate of Bennelong. The local member, Liberal backbencher and former tennis champion John Alexander, resigned over his father’s British citizenship and prepared to fight a by-election on 16 December. His opponent was former New South Wales Labor Premier Kristina Keneally, a Sky News host who took her own network by surprise with a sudden declaration that she would resign and contest the seat. Labor promised more funding for schools and attacked the government’s plans for stricter English tests for migrants, an issue that could cause anxiety in a multicultural electorate with a significant Chinese population. Labor’s reward was a swing that confirmed the government had lost ground since the election. Alexander held Bennelong with 54.9 per cent of the vote on a two-party basis, but this was a 4.8 per cent fall from July the previous year. A national swing of this order would destroy the government.

  The message to Turnbull, again, was to devise a sharper and stronger response to the constant Labor assault. His answer was a cabinet reshuffle. The politicians were changed but the policies remained the same. Old allies were discarded and ambitious junior ministers were rewarded, in the usual misapprehension that promotion buys loyalty.

  Brandis did not want to leave the cabinet or the Parliament, but rumours of his posting to London, as Australia’s next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, had been spread by his enemies for months. The immediate beneficiaries of his posting were obvious. Cormann aspired to take his place as the government’s next leader in the Senate. Dutton sought even more sway over national security with an expanded home affairs empire.

  Bishop went to Turnbull to make him see what a mistake it would be to send Brandis away.

  ‘George is your supporter. He would kill for you,’ she said. Bishop wanted Brandis in the Senate as a brake on the conservatives. She was worried that Turnbull had already granted too many concessions to the right in order to keep the peace and she wanted him to remember to look after those who stood by him — herself, Brandis, Marise Payne. Who, apart from Cormann, really wanted Brandis in London?

  While Cormann was the government’s strongest performer in the Senate, a man who could negotiate laws with a litter of kittens, that alone was no cause for giving him the leadership position in the upper house. Nor was it reason enough to replace Brandis with Christian Porter, one of Cormann’s colleagues from the West, a polished and talented politician, known as an effective Attorney-General in state Parliament in Perth before he moved into federal politics.

  Turnbull gave in. Cormann gained the authority he sought in the upper house. Porter secured the portfolio he wanted. How long would their gratitude last? Turnbull now relied so heavily on senior conservatives he tested the loyalties of others. He could not say no to those who wanted more power and prestige for themselves even when this meant losing Brandis, a man who had always voted for him. This was weakness. The memories of 2009, when he had lost the leadership after a clash with the conservatives, now made him more careful to keep them happy. A convincing election victory might have given him authority over an unruly party but he could not be what many Australians had expected. The leader who promised to govern from the centre was compromised by his need to satisfy the right, whether that meant a plebiscite on same sex marriage, a compromise on climate change or inaction on a republic.

  This was also a miscalculation. Turnbull could not trust Cormann as he thought. He needed Brandis more than he knew.

  Turnbull’s friends were also anxious about the way the reshuffle of December 2017 gave Peter Dutton more power than ever. Dutton had now reached a peak from which he could look down on most other ministers, watch every government policy and survey an empire of departments and agencies that none of his peers could match. Dutton gained the official title of Home Affairs Minister after a long argument about
the expansion of his department to include immigration policy, the treatment of asylum seekers, the Australian Border Force, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, and the Office of Transport Security. This was a realm that could stop a refugee boat, inspect a container at a port, intercept an email, listen to a phone conversation, disrupt a terror attack, stop a drug smuggler and decide high policy on how many migrants came into the country.

  Turnbull was warned against the creation of the new portfolio and doubly warned against the leading contender to become head of the department — Mike Pezzullo, one of Canberra’s most powerful public servants. ASIO did not want to be moved from the Attorney-General’s portfolio to this new super-ministry. Bishop argued that an agency like ASIO needed to work with lawyers from the Attorney-General’s Department rather than the Australian Border Force. Turnbull would look at Bishop and suggest the plan had merit. Bishop would reply by pointing to the political danger.

  ‘You are building this for Peter Dutton, to make him the most powerful minister in cabinet,’ she said. Turnbull’s most ardent supporters — Bishop, Brandis, Payne — were as one. All advised against this big new department. Turnbull proceeded anyway. He seemed to believe his future lay in keeping Dutton content.

  Turnbull used the reshuffle to reward some of those he could trust, like Craig Laundy, who rose from assistant minister to a full ministry in charge of small business and workplace relations, and Kelly O’Dwyer, who kept her cabinet position as Minister for Revenue and Financial Services while also becoming Minister for Women. Queenslander John McVeigh, a newcomer to federal politics after serving as a state minister in the troubled government of Campbell Newman, became Minister for Regional Development. An uproar over Michaelia Cash, whose office had tipped off the media about a police raid on the Australian Workers’ Union, did not prevent her staying in cabinet as Minister for Jobs and Innovation. The biggest promotion went to Dan Tehan, a Victorian Liberal whose plain style disguised his early career as a diplomat and his years as a policy adviser to ministers during the Howard government. Tehan had a long Liberal pedigree — his mother, Marie, had been a Victorian state minister — but what got him promoted was Turnbull’s view that he was utterly dependable. He entered cabinet as Minister for Social Services. His rise meant another Victorian, Alan Tudge, had to stay in the outer ministry, frustrated and impatient.

  The jealousies within the Liberals were nothing compared to the hatreds within the Nationals. Joyce was remaking the senior ranks of his party and settling scores. He used the December reshuffle to send Pitt to the backbench. He promoted David Littleproud, a Queenslander who had only been in Parliament for eighteen months and was vaulted into cabinet as Minister for Agriculture, a title other Nationals MPs had worked for years to try to attain. He dumped Chester as Infrastructure Minister in order to take the job himself.

  Chester could not accept a demotion like this. No justification, no explanation, and I’ve been backing him loyally. He thought of the reshuffle as a moment that would split the party. The previous leader, Warren Truss, had made MPs wait for promotion so they were only rewarded when they had shown years of dedication and discipline. Now Joyce was putting his mates into cabinet in a way that upset the old balance. The lesson to newcomers was to be like Barnaby: threaten to cross the floor, go rogue, because instability brought advancement.

  The personal rivalries were part of a deeper search for direction in the Nationals, a party founded on the land but now looking for support in a world with fewer farmers. The Liberal cry to defend ‘the base’ had its echo in the Nationals’ argument over who they should represent. Joyce wore an Akubra and on one occasion cracked a stockwhip in the marble foyer of Parliament House. Chester believed the party had to stand up for blue-collar workers, oil and gas workers, defence personnel and small business, as well as the farmers in his Victorian electorate of Gippsland. He believed the party’s challenge was to reach beyond the ‘blokes in big hats’ and appeal to a broader base.

  The talk about Joyce’s private life had increased in Parliament House after the newspaper feature about the ‘vicious innuendo’ he faced. Joyce could have arranged a gentle media interview to disclose his affair, but he chose not to do so. ‘He thought there were different rules for him,’ said a colleague. ‘He started to believe the Barnaby myth.’

  Everything changed when Campion drove into the Shell petrol station in the Canberra suburb of Braddon on the morning of Tuesday, 6 February 2018. It was the second day of Parliament for the year. A photographer from the Daily Telegraph, dispatched from Sydney with the sole purpose of finding Campion, watched her as she got out of her car, filled the tank and went to pay. He took the shot. Journalist Sharri Markson emailed Joyce’s press secretary, Jake Smith, that afternoon.

  ‘Dear Jake, I am writing a story for publication in tomorrow’s newspaper that Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce will be a father for the fifth time and is expecting a baby with Vikki Campion,’ Markson wrote.14 ‘We understand the sensitivities for all involved and will treat the story sensitively and delicately, as we did the last time I wrote about the personal crisis in Mr Joyce’s life. As you are already aware, a photographer from the Daily Telegraph has this morning taken a photograph of Vikki. Firstly, I would like to offer Mr Joyce and Ms Campion the option of a sit-down interview and a posed photograph to replace the pap taken this morning.’

  A wise politician would have taken up the offer. Only an angry one would spurn the deal and prepare for war. The photograph was unflattering, with Campion caught unawares in her sneakers, shorts and t-shirt, and it was unfair to make her the front-page picture when the public interest should be in her partner, the elected politician with a national profile. Joyce chose against arranging a better photograph and speaking to the media about the changes in his life. He made no reply to Markson’s two main questions. Was he the father? Had he told his daughters?

  ‘Bundle of Joyce,’ was the headline in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, 7 February. The government’s agenda was derailed and only one subject mattered. Natalie Joyce issued a short statement: ‘I understand this has been going on for many months and started when she was a paid employee.’ It guaranteed more questions over Campion’s career with Joyce and her transfer to jobs with Canavan and Drum. Campion was clearly qualified for the senior media positions, and the focus on her appointments sometimes came with the flawed notion that she should have been the one to give up her job, but there was no stopping the stampede. The Daily Telegraph put Joyce on its front page for ten days in a row.

  It did not take ten days for ministers to predict Joyce would quit. It was obvious from the start. ‘I thought he was finished,’ said one minister. There was no sign of a plan in Joyce’s office to control the damage. ‘He allowed it to turn into a scandal and that’s when he lost support among the public.’

  This was a textbook case on how to deepen a media crisis at every turn. Joyce admitted the failure of his marriage but ruled out further comment. ‘I’ll say that private matters remain private and I’m going to keep my private life private,’ he said on the night the story broke.15 (Only after he lost his job did he decide to reveal more of his private life, in a calamitous interview in which he said the paternity of the child was a ‘grey area’ — a comment that damned him in the eyes of many.16 His plea for privacy only provoked mockery after he and Campion signed a $150,000 contract to sell their story to the Seven Network.)

  Turnbull could not sack Joyce but could not brush off the scandal. In the second week of the media storm, with the business of Parliament eclipsed entirely by the affair, he put forward the idea of tougher rules for ministers to stop them sleeping with their staff. The leadership group canvassed the idea for more than an hour one morning, in the daily meeting of senior cabinet ministers around a table in the Prime Minister’s suite, but Turnbull could not convince them.
Bishop, Dutton, Cormann and Pyne were against the change. Weighing on their minds was the way the rule would justify the exposure of an affair and give the media a greater incentive to search for any breach. Morrison alone backed the proposal and did so with some zeal, sounding ‘preachy’ to others as he argued that ministers were there to work. It was painful for Joyce to sit quietly while others debated the problem he had caused. Turnbull ended the discussion by saying it was his call as leader.

  To his own cost, Turnbull was guided not by political calculations but personal morality. Joyce’s behaviour infuriated him for its hypocrisy and its wrongness. Turnbull’s marriage to Lucy was a vital part of his life and something he spoke of constantly in public. ‘It will continue forever,’ he once remarked at a book launch about his love for his wife.17 Now he chose to go ahead with a code of personal conduct without telling Joyce he would announce it. He justified the ban by pointing to the trouble Barnaby had caused for his wife and four daughters.

  ‘Barnaby made a shocking error of judgment in having an affair with a young woman working in his office. In doing so he has set off a world of woe for those women and appalled all of us,’ Turnbull said at a press conference in the Prime Minister’s courtyard. He said Joyce needed time away from work to reflect — an obvious suggestion he might resign — and he announced the new rule in the ministerial code of conduct: ministers, regardless of whether they were married or single, could not engage in sexual relations with staff. The ‘bonk ban’ was meant to bring politics into line with the standards in business.

  This judgement on his personal affairs outraged Joyce. He was beside himself with rage as he watched the remarks on television and phoned Turnbull as soon as the press conference was over to berate him for this public lecture on his private life. This was a betrayal to Joyce, who believed he had always defended Turnbull from Liberals who wanted to tear him down. Their friendship was over at this moment. Joyce and his allies in the Nationals believed it was grievously wrong for the leader of one Coalition party to speak about the leader of another in this way. Joyce had to defend himself. He strode into a Parliament House courtyard the next day to rubbish Turnbull’s remarks.