Australia PM: I shouldn’t have winked

Australia’s prime minister has admitted that he made a mistake by winking with a smile in a talk radio studio while listening to a phone-sex worker complain about welfare cuts.

The gesture, captured by a television camera and broadcast prominently in national news bulletins, has proved an unwelcome distraction for Tony Abbott, who is selling unpopular budget cuts that are criticised as betraying his conservative government’s lack of empathy for the poor.