Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he has forgiven Barnaby Joyce for describing him as a liar last year, insisting he could not care less what people say about him in text messages.
Senior cabinet figures admit it has been a bruising week for the government, with a separate leaked message reportedly from an unnamed minister describing the Prime Minister as a "horrible person" and a "complete psycho".
Labor has continued to use the leaked message to attack the Prime Minister's character, with frontbencher Jim Chalmers saying: "The people who know Scott Morrison the most trust him the least."
Mr Joyce sent the text message to former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins through a third party in March 2021.
"He is a hypocrite and a liar from my observations and that is over a long time," Mr Joyce wrote in the message.
"I have never trusted him, and I dislike how he earnestly rearranges the truth to a lie."
Mr Morrison responds
On Sunday, Mr Morrison said he would not be distracted by the text messages.
"What people send around in text messages I frankly could not care less about," Mr Morrison said.
Mr Chalmers also argued the scandal proved the government was not entirely focused on challenges in the aged care sector and the pandemic.
"The fact that this government is a smouldering ruin of disunity, dysfunction and division means the real issues that Australians care about … are not getting a look in," Mr Chalmers said.
When asked why voters should believe he was not a liar when the Deputy Prime Minister had concluded that he was, Mr Morrison said Mr Joyce had since changed his mind.
"A prime minister and a deputy prime minister work very closely together and his observations of me and that relationship has completely transformed the view that he had as a backbencher, at a time when his head was in a very different place," Mr Morrison said.
Cabinet minister Simon Birmingham made a similar distinction, saying Mr Joyce was in "a dark place" when he sent the message because he had been replaced as Nationals leader.
"He was bitter about the fact he had lost his position in the ministry and was blaming lots of people," Senator Birmingham told Channel Nine.
Mr Morrison, who rejected Mr Joyce's resignation offer, said politics had always been a brutal business and politicians were prone to bitterness and anger like everyone else.
"If you can't accept and understand each other's frailties and be forgiving in those circumstances, then frankly, it says a lot more about you than it does about others," Mr Morrison said.
"Human frailty, it's real. We all share it. We all live with it. And we all need to be more understanding of it."
