Treasurer admits affair but stays put

After being outed for sniffing one female staffer's chair and drunkenly pinging another's bra strap, the former West Australian Liberal leader Troy Buswell might have been expected to stay out of trouble.

Now his future as Treasurer hangs in the balance following revelations of an affair with, of all people, a state Greens MP, Adele Carles.

While the WA Premier, Colin Barnett, has yet to comment, it would be fair to assume he may have lost patience with Buswell, particularly in the light of disclosures that the Treasurer misused public funds during meetings with Carles.

However, the timing is tricky, as the 44-year-old Treasurer is to hand down the state Budget in three weeks.

Buswell was defiant yesterday, declaring he had no intention of resigning, after Carles, 41, admitted to the affair in the Perth Sunday Times. He said he would pay back the expenses, including a night's accommodation in the coastal town of Albany, which he charged to his Government credit card, and the use of his ministerial car on three occasions.

The bombastic Liberal and the newly elected Greens MP for Fremantle are strange bedfellows. Both are married, Carles with three daughters, Buswell with two sons. There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the Treasurer's wife, Margaret, who stood by him during the last scandal in 2008, has left him.

Buswell and Carles spent two nights together in Sydney after he attended ministerial council meetings in Canberra in late March, he said yesterday, adding that he paid for that accommodation himself.

Carles, the first Greens MP to be elected to a state lower house, said their affair had begun in late December and was now over. "I could attempt to portray myself as the vulnerable one who was taken advantage of," she said. "However, this is simply not true. We made a mutual, albeit stupid, decision as two consenting adults."

Both insisted the liaison had not compromised their parliamentary conduct. "I'm keen to continue the good work we've done in Treasury ahead of the May Budget," said Buswell, who repeatedly apologised to his family, Barnett, his colleagues and his constituents during a half-hour media grilling at Parliament House in Perth.

Buswell, who said he was seeking "professional assistance", must be used to the attention by now. Two years ago, he was forced to make a tearful public apology for sniffing the chair of a female Liberal staffer, snapping the bra strap of a Labor staffer and making sexist remarks to a Liberal MP. The scandal cost him the Liberal leadership, and many were astonished his ministerial career survived at all.

His wife said at the time: "Troy's not corrupt. He's not an adulterer. He hasn't run off with anyone [at Parliament House], and that's all going on."

Buswell has misused public money before. Last December, he admitted for the second time in two months that he had wrongly claimed on his travel accommodation allowance.