Barnaby Joyce

Early life and career

Joyce was born in Tamworth, New South Wales, and raised on a sheep and cattle property at Danglemah, near Woolbrook, as one of six children. His father, James Joyce, was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 1947 to study veterinary science at the University of Sydney, where he met Joyce's mother, Marie.

Young Joyce attended the local Woolbrook Public School, and later became a boarder at St Ignatius' College, Riverview, in Sydney. He attended the University of New England in Armidale, where he resided at St Albert's College, and graduated with a Bachelor of Financial Administration degree in 1989. Joyce met his wife, Natalie Abberfield, at university and they married in 1993. Whilst studying he worked as a bouncer at the Wicklow Hotel in Armidale.

After graduating, Joyce moved around northern New South Wales and Queensland, working as a farm worker (1989-1991), a nightclub bouncer in Moree, and later as a rural banker in Charleville (1994-1998). He worked in the accounting profession from 1991-2005; in 1999 founding his own accountancy firm in St George called Barnaby Joyce & Co. He is a fellow of CPA Australia. He served in the Royal Queensland Regiment of the Australian Army Reserve from 1997 to 2003.

In 2013 Joyce and his wife left St George to settle just outside Tamworth, New South Wales. Their four daughters were born in Tamworth.

Senate (2004–2013)

Joyce was elected to the Senate in the 2004 election representing the National Party; his term commenced on 1 July 2005 and ran until 30 June 2011. He was re-elected at the 2010 election as a member of the Liberal National Party, formed from a merger of the Queensland divisions of the two non-Labor parties.

Joyce regained the seat that the Nationals lost to the One Nation Party in 1998, defeating the One Nation Senator Len Harris. The Liberals won three seats in Queensland. Together with Joyce's election as a National Party Senator, it was the first time since the enlargement of the Senate in 1984 that a party or coalition had won four of the six available Senate seats from a single state.

Joyce won 6.5 percent of the vote on first preferences (see Australian electoral system), well short of the 14.3 percent required for election, but made up for lost ground by the flow of second preferences from eliminated candidates of the Family First and One Nation parties, as well as from the independent candidate, Pauline Hanson.

The 2004 election provided the ruling Coalition government with control of the Senate for the first time since 1981, at the same time as a holding the majority in the House of Representatives, granting them the power to push through unpopular changes. John Howard promised not to abuse this power.

Joyce said before taking his seat in July 2005 that he would not be a cipher and that the government should not take his support for granted. Because the Liberals campaigned against Joyce, he never felt bound to the Liberal Party. In particular, he initially expressed misgivings about the government's proposed sale of Telstra, the partially state-owned telecommunications company, and claimed that he would vote against the sale unless he and the rest of the party were satisfied that its service in rural areas was adequate and that privatisation would not adversely affect it.

Joyce's maiden speech to the Senate on 16 August 2005 was widely reported in the Queensland media. He expressed his desire to see the power of Australia's retailing duopoly, Coles Myer and Woolworths Limited, reduced so as to protect small business and consumer rights. He also espoused the virtues of free enterprise, particularly at the small business and family-owned business level. As well, having earlier told a Right to Life conference in July that his greatest goal in public life was to ban "the unfortunate carnage" of abortion, he used his first speech to identify abortion as the "slavery debate of our time".

On 17 August 2005 the government announced a package of A$3 billion to improve telecommunications services in regional and rural areas. On the basis of this, the National Party, in consultation with Joyce, agreed to support the sale of Telstra. This led the Labor Party and Stephen Conroy in particular to label Joyce "Backdown Barney" and "Barnaby Rubble" in an acrimonious parliamentary debate. However the Labor Party never reversed the sale of Telstra when they came to government. Joyce voted with the Government in the Senate on 14 September 2005, to sell the Government's remaining share of Telstra. As the Telstra Sale Legislation had been pursued by the lower house in prior parliamentary sessions with no assistance package for regional Australia it is Joyce who is credited for negotiating and holding out till the multi billion dollar assistance package was delivered so as to attain his vote in the Senate.

Joyce crossed the floor to vote with the Labor and minor parties on 11 October 2005 on two motions concerning the Trade Practices Act 1974. Although both motions were lost 32–32, it was the first time since 1986 that a Government Senator has crossed the floor.

Joyce also said that he would not support the Government's "Voluntary Student Unionism" Bill banning the levying of compulsory service or amenity fees by universities without amendment because he believed it would unfairly disadvantage regional universities. However, Joyce was unsuccessful in his attempt to amend the bill, and subsequently crossed the floor on 9 December 2005 to oppose it. This was ultimately futile as the Government had secured the vote of Family First Senator Steve Fielding.

One of Joyce's major successes was the passage of the Birdsville Amendment, outlawing predatory pricing of big retailers against small business and the capping of share ownership on the sale of Medibank Private to 15% to keep it in Australians hands as well as being at the forefront of the fight to keep Qantas as an Australian publicly listed company.

In October 2006 he again crossed the floor, unsuccessfully moving amendments to the government's cross media ownership laws.

Following a four-month visit to Antarctica as a member of the External Territories Committee in May 2006 Joyce promoted mining of Antarctica, banned under the Antarctic Treaty. Joyce justified his proposal by saying:

There's minerals there, there's gold, there's iron ore, there's coal, there's huge fish resources and what you have to ask is: 'Do I turn my head and allow another country to exploit my resource ... or do I position myself in such a way as I'm going to exploit it myself before they get there'.

In defending his position Joyce argued that other nations did not recognise Australia's 42 per cent claim over Antarctica. The proposal was roundly criticised including by Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell and Labor Opposition spokesman, Anthony Albanese.

On 4 January 2016 Federal Labor MP David Feeney made a similar warning in an opinion piece in The Australian newspaper, stating: "There is a fear that the bountiful mineral and oil resources of Antarctica may become an irresistible target for energy-hungry powers." Feeney argued that Australia needed to increase its ongoing scientific funding to maintain Australia's claim on these resources.

The only practising accountant in the Coalition, Joyce has a bluntness to the economic debate that raises the ire of his colleagues but has interested the media such as with his statement on the then Rudd government's first stimulus package in 2008, supported at the time by the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, that it would "be spread across the floor on Christmas Day with 'Made in China' written on the back". The Coalition backed Joyce's position of rejecting later stimulus packages.

Crossing the floor

Publicly, there is a perception that Joyce is a "maverick", and is someone who is not beholden to the Liberals. In total, Joyce has crossed the floor 28 times so far during his time in Parliament. As a Senator, Joyce used the threat of crossing the floor to extract concessions from his own government on various issues, most notably in relation to the sale of Telstra. The TheyVoteForYou website, which monitors the voting patterns of federal politicians, record that Joyce has "rebelled" against the party whip in 1.1% of divisions. The following table lists the legislation on which Joyce has crossed the floor, but does not include motions.

By convention, and in accordance with the well established principles of "Collective Responsibility" and "Cabinet Solidarity", all members of Cabinet are obligated to support the position of the Government including on matters of legislation and motions which the Parliament must decide. Therefore, as a Minister and member of Cabinet, Joyce is prohibited from crossing the floor, or if he does so, is required to resign as a Minister.

Leader of the Nationals in the Senate

In September 2008, Joyce replaced Nigel Scullion as Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, and stated that his party in the upper house would no longer necessarily vote with their Liberal counterparts in the upper house, which opened up another possible avenue for the Labor government to pass legislation. He was able to gain the majority support of the five Nationals (including one CLP) Senators through Fiona Nash and John Williams. The takeover was not expected nor revealed to the party until after it took place. Joyce remained leader of his party despite the Queensland divisions of the Liberal and National parties merging into the Liberal National Party of Queensland in July, 2008.

In February 2010 Joyce declared that Australia was "going to hock to our eyeballs to people overseas" and was "getting to a point where we can't repay it". This led to a response from the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, that he had "yet to meet a finance minister [sic] who has ever mused any possibility about debt default of his own country" and that there were "few things less likely than Australia defaulting on its sovereign debt". Joyce was re-elected in the 2010 election on a joint LNP ticket with Senators Brandis and Mason, but he got more below the line votes than above the line votes. He was appointed the Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Water and retained his role as leader of the Nationals in the Senate.

House of Representatives (2013–present)

On 13 April 2013, Joyce won the Nationals preselection for the House of Representatives seat of New England in New South Wales, for the September 2013 election. The seat was then held by independent politician Tony Windsor, who held the seat on a margin of 21.52%, and who subsequently announced his retirement. Independent state parliamentarian Richard Torbay had been preselected as National candidate in August 2012, but was pushed out due to concerns about his ownership of several Centrelink buildings and reports that he received secret donations from Labor interests to run against National candidates in his state seat.

Joyce had expressed interest in transferring to the lower house for some time. He had initially mulled running in Maranoa, which included his home in St George, but this was brought undone when that seat's longtime member, Bruce Scott, refused to stand aside in his favour. When Torbay's candidacy imploded, the state Nationals felt chagrin at Joyce's renewed interest, even though he had been born in Tamworth and had spent much of his youth on both sides of the Tweed. They initially floated NSW Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner as a replacement for Torbay. Ultimately, however, Joyce faced little opposition in the preselection contest.

Joyce resigned his Senate place on 8 August 2013. On 25 May 2013, Barry O'Sullivan was selected to replace him in the Senate.

Joyce won the seat of New England with a margin of 21 points. He was the first person to win back both a Senate seat and a House of Representatives seat previously lost by the Coalition.

By Windsor's account, Joyce revealed that if Windsor had contested the seat, rather than retired, Abbott's office was ready to finance a range of projects in the New England to aid Joyce's campaign—including $50 million for Armidale hospital—however, once there was no competition, all but $5 million was reallocated to other electorates.

Following the election, Joyce was elected deputy leader of the Nationals. Joyce was sworn in as the Minister for Agriculture on 18 September 2013, expanded to include Water Resources on 21 September 2015, in the First Turnbull Ministry.

In 2015 Joyce claimed more attention after warning actor Johnny Depp that if he failed to remove his dogs from Australia, imported illegally, they would be euthanised.

Joyce faced a stiff challenge from Windsor at the 2016 election. Seat-level polling in the seat of New England found Joyce and Windsor neck and neck. On election day, however, Joyce won handily, with 58 percent of the two-party vote. He actually won a majority on the primary vote, enough to retain the seat without the need for preferences.

On 14 August 2017, Joyce became embroiled in the 2017 Australian constitutional crisis, announcing in Question Time that he had received advice from the New Zealand High Commission that he could possibly hold New Zealand citizenship by descent from his father. Joyce has asked the government to refer him to the High Court as the Court of Disputed Returns, for consideration and clarification of his eligibility alongside that of Senators Ludlam, Waters, Canavan and Roberts.Later in the day, the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs and the Crown Law Office confirmed that Joyce was indeed a New Zealand citizen.He has since renounced New Zealand citizenship.On 27 October 2017, the High Court ruled that Joyce was ineligible to sit in the House of Representatives at the time of his election, and that his election was therefore invalid.

Leader of the National Party

On 11 February 2016, Joyce was elected unopposed as Leader of the National Party, with Fiona Nash as his deputy, and was sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia on February 18, 2016.

Social issues

Joyce took offence at a pamphlet handed out by Family First candidate Danny Nalliah, which identified bottle shops, brothels, masonic lodges, mosques, and Hindu and Buddhist temples as "strongholds of Satan", and said that he did not want the preferences of such a party. Joyce criticised the party, calling them "the lunatic Right", and saying that "these are not the sort of people you do preference deals with".

Joyce has spoken out in opposition to same-sex marriage, attending several rallies on the matter in Canberra. In 2011, he lobbied against a bill proposed by senator Sarah Hanson-Young that would allow for same-sex couples to marry.

In recent years Joyce has changed his views in relation to medical cannabis, and in 2014 he publicly supported calls for the introduction of a medicinal cannabis trial following a high profile campaign led by a young man in his own constituency, Dan Haslam, who was at the time suffering from an aggressive form of terminal cancer. Joyce said following his meeting with Mr Haslam:

"You’re always moved by someone who has cancer and they are looking for whatever opportunity may exist to deal with it. I am against cannabis for recreational use, but just as people grow opium for therapeutic use in palliative care and pain control, if there is a capacity for the active constituents in cannabis to be prescribed to assist with conditions such as terminal cancer, this should be considered. If it is under strict controls and prescribed by a doctor it should be considered."

In September, 2015, Joyce was the first senior minister to call for the Australian Government to accept more Syrian refugees in response to the humanitarian crisis engulfing Turkey and Europe. However, his call to prioritise Christian refugees above those from other faiths drew criticism from some human rights observers.

Joyce opposes capital punishment, but has called for a national debate in Australia on the issue of whether the death penalty should be reintroduced in the country.

Economic issues

On the economy, Joyce has often earned the ire of his economic rationalist parliamentary colleagues in the Liberal Party of Australia. Though not popular among the Coalition, Joyce has taken up a number of causes often labelled as populist, such as his support for the retention of a single-desk wheat export marketing system for Australian grain growers, drought assistance for primary producers, and amendments to the Trade Practices Act 1974 and media reform regulations that aim to strengthen the ability of small business to compete with multi-national corporations. When questioned on his views, he stated "Maybe I'm an agrarian socialist, I don't know, is there a problem with being an agrarian socialist?".

On 17 March 2009, Joyce launched a privately funded advertisement campaign to keep Rio Tinto local, attacking a bid by the Chinese government-owned resources company Chinalco, a bid which has also been heavily criticised by Legal & General in the United Kingdom.

Joyce also stopped the sale of Qantas to Allco Finance Group in 2006; Allco Finance Group later collapsed.

Joyce is also known to oppose the sale of large Australian agricultural assets to foreign investors. In 2012, as the Opposition spokesman for Water, he was vocal in his opposition to the sale of Cubbie Station to a consortium led by a Chinese State Owned Enterprise. The then Treasurer, Wayne Swan, ultimately approved the sale. In 2013, as Agriculture Minister, Joyce as well as his National Party colleagues, strongly opposed the proposed sale of Australia's largest bulk grain handler GrainCorp to the American company Archer Daniels Midland. The then Liberal Treasurer, Joe Hockey, rejected the sale based on the hugely discretionary "National Interest" grounds which a Treasurer can use to block such transactions. Despite the reasons Hockey used to justify his decision, it was widely reported that the National Party demanded this outcome, with the Labor Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen accusing the junior Coalition partner of "bullying" the Treasurer into arriving at this decision.

In 2015, Joyce voiced opposition to the sale of another large Australian asset to foreign buyers, this time S Kidman & Co. which owned the largest combined landholdings in Australia, including the iconic Kidman Station. Most of the known interest came from Chinese companies therefore Joyce was accused of xenophobia, claims which he rejected. In November 2015, the Treasurer, Scott Morrison decided that the sale of S Kidman & Co to any foreign investor would not be approved based on national security grounds, due to part of the company being in the vicinity of the Woomera Prohibited Area, among other reasons. The Labor Shadow Agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon slammed the Government's decision as "political" and accused it of running a "discriminatory foreign investment regime".

Environmental issues

Joyce has taken a stand on a number of environmental issues.

In 2015 two decisions he made earned him a Froggatt Award from the Invasive Species Council. He was awarded for taking "principled decisions" in regard to the decision to introduce mandatory biofouling rules to prevent marine pests entering Australia, and for acting quickly and decisively in expelling Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s two dogs which had been brought into Australia in an apparent breach of Australia’s strict quarantine laws.

Over 2015 and 2016 Joyce has strongly opposed major coal mining in the Liverpool Plains.

Joyce is a global warming climate change sceptic, but has made comment about its possibility based on some of his own personal observations.

Joyce supports reducing environmental water allocations in the Murray–Darling basin in order to reduce the impact on towns and people currently dependent on the rivers.

While his biofouling stance is relevant, Joyce has not taken a keen interest in supporting protection of the Great Barrier Reef with a notable lack of engagement in Parliamentary decisions related to the Great Barrier Reef.

In March 2017 Joyce called for Leadbeater's possum to be taken off the critically endangered species list in order to boost the logging of forest to maintain employment. Environmentalists believe that such action would be devastating for the possum and countered that Joyce was prepared to kill two dogs but not ensure the preservation of an entire species.