Joe Hockey was "devastated" when he saw the headline "Treasurer for Sale" splashed across the front page of a major Fairfax newspaper, he's told the Federal Court.
But the Liberal politician took another hit days later, when his own daughter asked if someone was "trying to buy me".
Mr Hockey entered the witness box in Sydney on Monday afternoon to testify in his high-profile defamation suit against the publishing giant.
The court action centres on stories run in Fairfax Media's flagship newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last year under the headline "Treasurer for Sale".
The Canberra Times used another headline.
The stories examined a political fundraising body in Mr Hockey's electorate known as the North Sydney Forum, where members who paid an annual fee were able to meet with the treasurer at special events.
Mr Hockey has told the court he first became aware of the articles when he received a phone call from his press secretary shortly after midnight on May 5, 2014.
When he awoke a few hours later he headed straight for his local newsagency in Canberra.
"I saw the front pages, I was stunned. And Matt the newsagent said, 'What's all this about?' I just shook my head," Mr Hockey said.
"I went across to the bakery for one of their very ordinary cups of coffee and looked around, and the papers were everywhere."
Under questioning by his barrister Bruce McClintock SC, Mr Hockey said he felt "absolutely devastated" at the suggestion he was corrupt.
"I was most concerned for my wife, and my children, and for my father," he went on, glancing out to the body of the courtroom, where his wife Melissa Babbage sat staring straight ahead, her heels crossed.
He said the headlines had caused his own family - including his frail and elderly father - to question him.
"A few days later my daughter asked me whether someone was trying to buy me," Mr Hockey said.
"The only thing you walk out of politics with is your reputation.
"If, in the eyes of your own family, as there was in the phone call with my father, there's a doubt - a brief doubt - then what have you got?"
Earlier on Monday Mr Hockey's lawyers alleged that Fairfax published "scurrilous and false allegations" against the treasurer in an act of petty spite.
Matthew Collins QC, for Fairfax, questioned Mr Hockey about a number of critical public comments he made on Twitter and elsewhere about political opponents including former Labor prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, as well as Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.
The court heard one tweet published on Mr Hockey's official account read: "Access to Rudd, at a price... FACT".
"Do you consider it part of the rough and tumble of political life to call your opponents hypocrites," Dr Collins asked.
"As they do me," Mr Hockey replied.
Mr Hockey said he did not intend for the North Sydney Forum to be a fundraising vehicle for his re-election campaign and he did not have a hands-on role in setting up the organisation.
"The organisation's purpose was to establish a business networking forum," he said.
Shown a passage from the North Sydney Forum's website, which stated the Forum was "vitally important to Joe's ongoing success and the development of effective Coaltion (sic) policy", Mr Hockey said: "They've overplayed it. Massively overplayed it."
"I wasn't intimately involved in the activities of the North Sydney Forum," he added.
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