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Barnaby Joyce says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should take a leaf out of his book and consider relinquishing his executive role of leadership in the Coalition, if he doesn’t lift the Coalition’s poll numbers by Christmas.
Mr Turnbull hit the benchmark he used to roll Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, losing 30 consecutive Newspolls – but without the weird comments about women and raw onion-eating.
The poll figures, published in The Australian newspaper, showed the Coalition trailing Labor 48 per cent to 52 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.
Turnbull says he isn’t too concerned about the odd couple of percentages in the polls, but it is believed the Coalition backbenchers are growing increasingly nervous about whether or not they’ll be able to remain on a quarter of a million dollars a year going into the next election.
“He should do the honourable thing and stand down like I did after three weeks of intense media scrutiny of my personal life, even after I said I wouldn’t stand down” said the Former Deputy, Joyce.
“And like I did the other time in October last year, after I was found to be ineligible to be in the lower house and essentially put Federal politics on hold for a couple of months until I got re-elected – only to stand down to the backbench a couple of months later when everyone found out I’d been rooting around”
“Actually October might not count because I was forced to stand down by the high court”
When asked if he thought the exact 6 month period he just described might be to blame for some of Turnbull’s more negative poll numbers, Barnaby Joyce asked reporters if they were happy for what they did to Steve Smith.
