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Barnaby Thomas Gerald Joyce (born 17 April 1967), Australian politician, has been a member of the Australian Senate representing the state of Queensland since July 2005. He is a member of the National Party of Australia. 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 was educated at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview, in Sydney.

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 future wife, Natalie, who is part Lebanese. His parents were opposed to the marriage and no one from his family attended the 1993 wedding. After graduating, Joyce moved around northern New South Wales and Queensland, and at one point worked as a bouncer. The Joyces have four daughters and now live in St. George in western Queensland, where Joyce had an accounting business.

A devout Catholic, Joyce has served as President (1998-2004) of the St George branch of the Society of St Vincent de Paul. He holds conservative views on most moral and social issues, but opposes extremism. He took offence at a pamphlet put out by Family First Party campaigners, which identified 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."

Senator

Joyce was elected to the Senate in the parliamentary election held on 9 October 2004. His term will run until 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 victory gave the ruling Coalition government control of the senate for the first time since 1981, a result that few political commentators had expected.

Although Joyce is a member of the ruling Coalition, he 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 expressed misgivings about the government's proposed sale of Telstra, the partially state-owned telecommunications company, and said that he might vote against the sale unless he and the rest of the party were satisfied that its service in rural areas was adequate and that privatization would not adversely affect it.

Joyce's maiden speech to the Senate on August 16, 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.

On 17 August 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 has also said that he cannot support the Government's legislation banning the levying of compulsory service or amenity fees by universities (known as the "voluntary student unionism bill") in its present form, since, he says, this would unfairly disadvantage regional universities.

Joyce voted with the government in the Senate on the 14th of September, to sell the government's remaing share of Telstra. The actual sale will go through at a date yet to be determined. Joyce had previously not made any concrete commitment to selling the government share of Telstra or not, with Joyce holding reservations about the future intentions of Telstra, and the level of communication services in rural Australia.

External links

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

• 1967 births
• Australian Senators
• National Party of Australia politicians