Barnaby Joyce - Senate Service

Senate Service

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. 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, 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'.

The only practising accountant in the coalition, he 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 Rudd Labor 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.

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 it took place.

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 and is the Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Water and retained the role as leader of the Nationals in the Senate.