Barnaby Joyce

Senator Barnaby Joyce BCA (UNE)
Australian Senator for Queensland
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 July 2005
Preceded by	Len Harris
Personal details
Born	(1967-04-17) 17 April 1967 Tamworth, New South Wales
Political party	National Party of Australia, Liberal National Party of Queensland

Barnaby Thomas Gerald Joyce (born 17 April 1967), Australian politician, has been a National Party member of the Australian Senate representing the state of Queensland since July 2005. He is known for being a highly independent member of his party, having crossed the floor 19 times under the Howard coalition government.

As of 17 September 2008, Joyce took over the National Party senate leader position from Nigel Scullion.

Early life

Joyce was born in Tamworth, New South Wales, and was brought up in Danglemah. One of six children from a sheep-and-cattle farming family, he attended St Ignatius' College, Riverview, in Sydney. His father, James Joyce, was a New Zealander who moved to Australia to study veterinary science at Sydney University where he met Barnaby's mother, Marie, and they made their living as farmers.

Joyce graduated with a commerce degree from the University of New England in Armidale, and served in the Australian Army Reserve from 1994 to 1999. At university Joyce met his wife, Natalie, and they married in 1993. After graduating, Joyce moved around northern New South Wales and Queensland, and at one point worked as a bouncer. Joyce worked in the Accounting Profession before entering Parliament and is an FCPA (Fellow of CPA Australia). The Joyces have four daughters and now live in St George in western Queensland, where Joyce had an accounting business.

A Roman Catholic, Joyce served as President (1998-2004) of the St George branch of the Society of St Vincent de Paul.

Political views

Senator Joyce holds conservative views on most moral and social issues. Joyce is pro-life and was a prominent voice in the parliamentary debate regarding the introduction of the drug RU-486. He has also consistently opposed the use of capital punishment. He took offense at a pamphlet put 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". Nonetheless he gained office with preference flows from Family First Party, amongst many others including Pauline Hanson.

On the economy, Senator Joyce has often earned the ire of his economic rationalist parliamentary colleagues in the Liberal Party of Australia. 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?"

Senate service

Senator Joyce's office in St George

Joyce was elected to the Senate in the 2004 election, his term commencing on 1 July 2005. His term will run until 30 June 2011 unless there is a double dissolution election in the meantime. Joyce regained the seat which the Nationals lost to the One Nation Party in 1998, defeating the One Nation Senator Len Harris. The Liberals won three seats in Queensland, making this 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 count attracted considerable media attention because Joyce's election contributed to the ruling Coalition government having control of the senate for the first time since 1981, a result that few political commentators had expected.

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. 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 $3 billion to improve telecommunications services in regional and rural areas. On the basis of this, the National Party, including Joyce, agreed to support the sale of Telstra. This led the Labor Party to label Joyce "Backdown Barney" and "Barnaby Rubble" in an acrimonious parliamentary debate. 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.

Senator Joyce crossed the floor to vote with the ALP 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 Senator 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.

In May 2006 Joyce promoted mining of Antarctica (mining is 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 September 2008, Joyce replaced CLP Senator and Nationals deputy leader 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 opens up another possible avenue for the government to get legislation through. He was able to gain the majority support of the five Nationals (including one CLP) Senators through Fiona Nash and John Williams, with Nash giving Scullion the tap on the shoulder. The takeover was not expected nor revealed to the party until after the takeover took place.

External links

• Barnaby Joyce's official Senate home page - includes transcript of maiden speech

• Joyce digs in for keeps to set up Telstra fund (Sydney Morning Herald, 1 August 2005)
• Barnaby Joyce profile (The Age, 16 April 2005)
• Joyce stands by Telstra vote (7.30 Report, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 14 September 2005)]