LIVE: Election 2025 - Barnaby Joyce causes Peter Dutton grief with candid admission about his wife - as Opposition Leader announces huge backflip on TWO of his key election policies

The Opposition Leader has not had a good morning.

He was forced to defend the Coalition’s decision to dump their drive to push all public servants back into the office five days a week, while also amending heir policy to cut 41,000 bureaucrats.

‘Well Sarah, that was always the plan, and there would be natural attrition and a hiring freeze,’ Mr Dutton told the Today.

‘Hey Peter, I’m sorry,’ host Sarah Abo cut hin.

‘I’m struggling to keep up, you’re saying it was always the plan, but it wasn’t the plan. You wanted to cut back 41,000 jobs … how can they have both always been the plan? It doesn’t make sense.’

A visibly frustrated Mr Dutton insisted there was no change to the costing.

‘There’s no change to the costing at all because the original plan of the natural attrition and freezing was what we’d always had,’ he responded,

‘It’s the way in which Labor’s contorted that into something else.’

Mr Dutton accused the Prime Minister of whipping up a scare campaign over their WFH policy.

But he admitted the Coalition had made a mistake.

Watch the tense exchange below:

Barnaby Joyce admitted that his wife Vikki Campion was ‘pretty upset’ by the Coalition’s now-dumped WFH policy for public servants.

‘Obviously there was people pretty upset. Vicky was pretty upset, because she works from home,’ Mr Joyce told Sunrise.

‘The sin wouldve been to stick with it and say “No, Im too proud, Im not gonna change”.

‘You want to have people who listen to whats happening out there and go "OK, I get it”.’

Ms Campion met her husband when she was his communications advisor and they wed in a country-style ceremony at the family estate in the NSW Northern Tablelands in late 2023.

Ms Campion works as a journalist so would not have been affected by the Coaliton’s former policy of ending WFH for public servants.