Australia PM’s Discomfort Mounts After Damaging Text Leak

(Bloomberg) -- Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison, lagging in the polls before an election later this year, is dealing with the fallout from a leaked text message from his deputy Barnaby Joyce branding the premier “a hypocrite and a liar.”

Joyce has apologized for the texts, which were sent in March last year before he took the deputy prime minister role. Details of the messages were reported in the Australian newspaper on Saturday. He said he had offered his resignation, which Morrison had rejected.

“I should never have written the texts that I did,” Joyce said at a press conference, adding that he had not expected them to end up in the public domain. Joyce said his views on Morrison had changed since getting to know him on a one-on-one professional basis as his deputy.

The leak comes at a difficult time for Morrison, who has been criticized for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. A survey by Newspoll last Sunday showed the ruling center-right coalition trailed the opposition Labor Party by 56% to 44%, with Morrison's approval rating falling to its lowest point since February 2020. An election must be called before the end of May under Australian law.

Read: Australia PM Admits Covid Missteps as Polls Show Him Losing Vote

The prime minister said in a statement that he accepted Joyce's apology. “I understand Barnaby was in a different headspace last year, both professionally and personally, and so I know he genuinely no longer feels this way,” Morrison said.

Still, the leak strengthens the case of political opponents who say Morrison doesn't have the character for the top job. It comes after the prime minister was asked by a reporter earlier in the week about a two-year-old text from former New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian to an unidentified federal cabinet minister in which she was said to describe Morrison as a “horrible, horrible person.”

Labor leader Anthony Albanese said Joyce's position as deputy was untenable in light of the text, describing the government as rife with disunity.

“It's a shambles which isn't looking after the interests of Australians because they are obsessed by their internal hatreds and their dysfunction,” Albanese said at a media conference.