Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. This week the Assistant Minister for Children and Families, the member for Capricornia, said that if the Deputy Prime Minister got the job again:

… there would be women out there that would be unhappy with that.

Is the assistant minister correct or is the Deputy Prime Minister's return to the job good for the women of regional Australia?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I respect the right of any person to make their concerns clear. I make sure that I stay in close correspondence both with my colleagues and with my family. By so doing, I endeavour, as we all do, to try and make a better person of myself. I know that it is imperative, in the considerations I had over three years on the backbench, that, like all of us, we have to see our way to a better self. I'm doing that. I find it a little bit demeaning, though, to litigate this at the dispatch box, but I'm happy if that's what you want to do.