Barnaby Joyce
Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce is an Australian politician who served as the deputy prime minister of Australia from 2016 to 2018 and from 2021 to 2022, concurrent to his terms as the leader of the National Party. He has been the member of parliament for the New South Wales division of New England since 2013. Joyce previously held various ministerial positions in the Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison governments.
Joyce was born in Tamworth, New South Wales, and graduated from the University of New England. In 1999, he set up an accountancy practice in St George, Queensland. Joyce was elected to the Australian Senate at the 2004 federal election, taking office in 2005. He became the National Party's Senate leader in 2008. At the 2013 election, he transferred to the House of Representatives, winning the rural seat of New England in New South Wales. In 2013, Joyce replaced Nigel Scullion as deputy leader of the National Party. He succeeded Warren Truss as party leader and deputy prime minister in 2016.
During the 2017–18 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis, Joyce was confirmed to be a dual citizen of New Zealand, which is forbidden for parliamentarians under section 44 of the Constitution of Australia. In October 2017, the High Court of Australia ruled that he had been ineligible to be a candidate for the House of Representatives at the time of the 2016 election. Joyce re-entered parliament in December 2017 after winning the New England by-election with a large swing against low-profile opposition. In February 2018, he resigned his ministerial and leadership roles after acknowledging that he was in a relationship and expecting a child with a former staffer. He was succeeded by Michael McCormack, but remained in the party as a backbencher. In 2021, Joyce defeated McCormack in a leadership spill to return as deputy prime minister. Following the Liberal–National coalition's loss at the 2022 federal election, Joyce was replaced by David Littleproud as leader of the National Party, after a leadership challenge. On 27 November 2025, Joyce resigned from the Nationals to sit as an independent, and joined One Nation on 8 December 2025, becoming the party's sole MP in the House of Representatives.
Early life and career
Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce was born on 17 April 1967 in Tamworth, New South Wales, to James Joyce and Marie Joyce, both of whom were farmers. His father, a World War II veteran, was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 1947. His paternal grandfather, John P. Joyce, was a career soldier who participated in the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I, including the landing at Anzac Cove. Joyce was raised as one of six children on a sheep and cattle property about 60 kilometres north-east at Danglemah near Woolbrook.Joyce attended Woolbrook Public School, boarded at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview in Sydney, and graduated from the University of New England Armidale with a Bachelor of Financial Administration in 1989. Joyce met Natalie Abberfield at UNE. They married in 1993. After graduating, Joyce moved around northern New South Wales and Queensland as a farm worker, nightclub bouncer, and banker. From 1991 to 2005, Joyce worked in the accounting profession, and founded his own accountancy firm, Barnaby Joyce & Co., in St George, Queensland in 1999. He is a fellow of CPA Australia. From 1996 to 2001, Joyce served in the Royal Queensland Regiment of the Australian Army Reserve.
Senator for Queensland (2005–2013)
In the 2004 Australian federal election, Joyce was elected to the Senate representing Queensland and the National Party. His term ran from 1 July 2005 until 30 June 2011. He was re-elected at the 2010 election as a member of the Liberal National Party, which was formed by a merger of the Queensland divisions of the two non-Labor parties.Before taking his seat in July 2005, Joyce said that the government should not take his support for granted. As a senator, he crossed the floor nineteen times during the term of the Howard government. Joyce initially expressed misgivings about the government's proposed sale of Telstra, the partially state-owned telecommunications company; nevertheless, Joyce voted in favour of the sale a few months later in September 2005. This led the Labor Party to label Joyce "Backdown Barney" and "Barnaby Rubble" in an acrimonious parliamentary debate. As the Telstra Sale Legislation had been pursued by the lower house in prior parliamentary sessions with no assistance package for regional Australia, Joyce was later credited with holding out until the multi-billion dollar assistance package was negotiated and delivered.
Joyce opposed the free provision of the Gardasil vaccine.
In May 2006, after a one-month visit to Antarctica as a member of the External Territories Committee, Joyce promoted mining there, banned under the Antarctic Treaty, and stated that other nations did not recognise Australia's 42 per cent claim over Antarctica. The proposal was roundly condemned by Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell, Labor Opposition spokesman Anthony Albanese and others.
Crossing the floor
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. He crossed the floor 28 times and there was a perception that he was a "maverick" and someone not beholden to the Liberals. The They Vote For You website, which monitors the voting patterns of federal politicians, records 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.
| Year | Legislation | Voting stance | Outcome of legislation | Citation |
| 2006 | Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill, 2006 | No | Passed | |
| 2006 | Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill 2005 | No | Passed | |
| 2006 | Tax Laws Amendment Bill 2006 | No | Passed |
Leader of the Nationals in the Senate
In September 2008, after replacing Nigel Scullion as Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, Joyce 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. Joyce gained the majority support of the five Nationals 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 2009, when then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull decided that the Coalition would support the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme, Joyce as Nationals Senate leader helped trigger the rebellion within Coalition ranks against it.
The coalition's issues with the ETS would lead to Turnbull being replaced as Liberal leader by Tony Abbott.
In February 2010, Joyce as shadow finance minister 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 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's time as Shadow Finance Minister was fraught with difficulties which also infamously saw him confusing trillions with billions in his first appearance as Shadow Finance Minister at the National Press Club and became the source of ridicule by the Government.
There were calls from within the Coalition that Joyce be removed from the finance portfolio as they saw it as a distraction in their attacks on the government which was having problems with the insulation scheme.
Joyce lasted as Shadow Finance Minister for three months from December 2009 to March 2010 when Abbott moved him to Regional Development, Infrastructure and Water.
In the 2010 election Joyce was re-elected to parliament on the LNP ticket with senators George Brandis and Brett Mason, and Joyce got more below the line votes than above the line votes. He was reappointed to the Shadow Ministry with his portfolio renamed as Regional Development, Local Government and Water as well as remaining as leader of the Nationals in the Senate.
House of Representatives
In 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 held on a margin of 21.52% by independent politician Tony Windsor, who had decided to retire. 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.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. He resigned from the Senate on 8 August 2013, and 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. The Nationals had held New England without interruption from 1922 until Windsor won the seat in 2001, and had been heavily tipped to regain it with Windsor's retirement. During Windsor's tenure, most calculations of "traditional" two-party matchups between the Nationals and Labor had shown it as a comfortably safe National seat. Joyce is one of only a handful of people to have represented multiple states in parliament, and the only person to have represented one state in the Senate and a different state in the House of Representatives.
By Windsor's account, Joyce revealed that if Windsor had contested the seat, rather than retired, Prime Minister Abbott's office was ready to finance a range of projects in the New England to aid Joyce's campaign ; however, once there was no competition, all but $5 million was reallocated to other electorates.
File:Go On.jpg|thumb|right|Joyce with Julie Bishop and Kelly O'Dwyer in 2016
Following the 2013 election, Joyce was elected deputy leader of the Nationals. On 18 September 2013, Joyce was sworn in as Minister for Agriculture. On 21 September 2015, this portfolio was expanded to include Water Resources in the First Turnbull Ministry.
In September 2015 Joyce gained international attention after warning actor Johnny Depp that his two pet dogs would be euthanised if not removed from Australia after being imported illegally.
At the 2016 election Joyce faced a challenge from Tony Windsor, who came out of retirement to contest. Seat-level polling in the seat of New England found Joyce and Windsor neck and neck, however Joyce won with a majority on the primary vote, enough to retain the seat without the need for preferences.