Australian PM vows he can work with deputy after rift

Bloomberg

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared he can “absolutely” continue working with his deputy after the pair met in a bid to avoid fracturing the coalition government amid the fallout from Barnaby Joyce’s extramarital affair with a former staffer.
“It’s always very important to meet, to work through the various challenges and issues that we face, but the important thing is Barnaby and I are working closely together as we always have,” Turnbull told reporters in Melbourne on Sunday.
The nation’s two most senior lawmakers talked for more than an hour in Sydney on Saturday and agreed they need to work better together in the future. Turnbull said he and Joyce, who is the deputy prime minister and leader of the Nationals party, had a “frank and warm, friendly, good, constructive meeting.”
“There are no issues between the Liberal and National parties at all,” Turnbull said, characterizing the relationship between the two factions as “the most enduring political alliance in Australian history and it will continue.”
Turnbull lambasted Joyce on Thursday over an affair that ended his 24-year marriage and accused him of making a “shocking error of judgment.” Joyce, 50, who leads the junior party in the coalition, hit back saying the criticism was “inept” and “unnecessary.”
Turnbull said on Sunday he didn’t apologize to Joyce because “there’s nothing to apologize for.”
Turnbull’s predecessor, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, said that if politicians wanted to give each other advice, they should do so by knocking on their door and picking up the phone to talk directly. “As a general rule one party doesn’t give another party public advice,” the ABC quoted Abbott as saying.