What's your take on the Barnaby Joyce saga?

 

Is it in the Australian public's best interest to learn more about Barnaby Joyce's private life, or is it just interesting for the Australian public?

172 comments

I have stated my thoughts elsewhere here and will state them once again.

YES, I definitely think what has taken place IS our business, after all, he is supposed to be employed by us!

Barnaby is a despicable SOB  a downright liar in life AND his job, he is a chronic alcoholic a hypocrite,  he takes bribes, as also supposed to be a good Catholic,  does that mean that if you go to confession and or church you can get away with anything?!                                                                                                                     He is very ready to criticise others like the SSM and has said marriage is a sacred and valued thing.

Do we need a person of this type in the position he holds -- drunk most of the time and has NO respect for the people he is supposed to represent, also willing to sell out our country for $$$$,  Nor does he have the presentation represent our country.

Another position has also been made for this other woman -- AT OUR EXPENSE

IMO BJ should be sacked   -- or at least sent to the back bench -- but when this happens they still get their wage AND their perks.

If we were to do such in a position we had we would be out on our necks pronto!

How do you know he is a "chronic alcoholic?"

PlanB, I cannot condone that vicious personal attack on our deputy PM. You sound like you have a personal vendetta? 

I will also add some more BJ also looks like he has a few Roos lose in the top paddock, to see all of his camera shots -- this   ' thing'     has NOTHING going for him at all

How inept of this government to have this fool as Deputy Prime Minister cavorting around Canberra with his bit of fluff on the side and then creating a position to keep her safely nearby when found it. What a joke this government is!!! 

It says a LOT about the Government -- these scum should have a character test b4 they are allowed to even stand!

Are you talking about ALL the Governments Australia has had? Or only this present one?

Frank this THING deserves what I said about him he has ripped off this country and its people he is a lying creep and he crawls up Gina's @#^*  as well and why did he buy that land in the Pilliga scrub he lied about that too he bought is to resell for a rail and or Gas.

BJ does not give a ^$#@ about his voters or this country just the likes of Adani etc

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/barnaby-joyce-to-sell-property-to-avoid-csg-conflict-of-interest-20130824-2siel.html

 

Have just been reading more on what Eddie Obeid, his son and Ian McDonald got up too...the land purchase by Barnaby pales into insignificance when you read what these three got up to.  That said I do not condone anyone having inside knowledge and using it to their advantage.

Yes Radish Obeid etc did dreadful things but where are they now,  where they should be,  they are where BJ should be too IN JAIL!!!!!!

Don't think that is likely at all to be quite honest PlanB.  

Sadly I don't think so either Radish

 

 

Apparently the PM told Barnaby last year that it was  inappropriate for her to continue working for him.  But the ABC has been told Mr Joyce initially resisted calls to distance himself from her professionally until the Prime Minister's office (PMO) became involved.

After a high level meeting between the PMO and the Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Campion was moved into a newly created and unadvertised position in Nationals Minister Matt Canavan's team, according to the source.

Now there is speculation that he took his mistress on holidays and hotels at taxpayers expense.  It looks like Barnaby has done his dash and this saga isn't going away.

That you rely on the ABC for objective reporting does not reflect well Toot2000. It displays continual left-wing bias and its reports should be taken with a large grain of salt.  The Liberal National Parties need to go on the attack - there's a wealth of Labor hypocrisy when you examine Labor's history involving illicit affairs and jobs eg Jim Cairns, Hawke, Burke, Pliberseck each of whom has skeletons in the cupboard.  

Barnaby Joyce to sell property to avoid CSG 'conflict of interest'

The purchase of an unlikely property on the edge of the Pilliga has intrigued many of this politician's neighbours.

Heath AstonHeath Aston 

Gwabegar, in north-western NSW, does not rank among Australia's premier farming districts.

The narrow splinter of grazing land running through the middle of the Pilliga scrub is referred to by some as ''mongrel country''.

Barnaby Joyce: The Nationals' candidate for New England on a campaign stop near Tamworth. Barnaby Joyce: The Nationals' candidate for New England on a campaign stop near Tamworth. Photo: Nick Moir

Other descriptions offered to Fairfax Media by veteran farmers and even locals include ''goanna country'', ''heartbreak country'' and just plain ''shit''.

Little-known and even less visited, the Pilliga scrub - between Coonabarabran and Narrabri - is Australia's biggest inland forest, an eerie wilderness of more than half a million hectares of cypress pine.

Related ArticlesJoyce to sell land in 'mongrel country' at site of CSG boom

The semi-arid climate makes farming in the Pilliga tough. The state forest remains for the simple reason that the settlers couldn't see the benefit in cutting it down.

The rundown settlement of Gwabegar, population 242, sits at the heart of the Pilliga. The village once existed on sawmills - an industry now all but closed - and the rail line that opened between Coonabarabran and Gwabegar in 1923 to transport pine out of the Pilliga, and closed in 2005.

The trees growing through the fallen roofs of the abandoned Gwabegar Pony Club are just one more sign the area's best days are behind it.

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It was natural then that the arrival in Gwabegar of a newly minted senator, Barnaby Joyce, in 2006 would set local tongues wagging. Why on earth would a politician from Queensland buy land in the Pilliga?

''Scalded country'': A lone lamb surveys part of Barnaby Joyce's property at Gwabegar, in the state's north-west. ''Scalded country'': A lone lamb surveys part of Barnaby Joyce's property at Gwabegar, in the state's north-west. Photo: Nick Moir

The senator grew up in Woolbrook, outside Tamworth - about four hours east of Gwabegar by road.

Joyce and his wife Natalie bought their first block in July 2006. Sale records show it was purchased from Brett and Traci Worrell for the sum of $230,000.

The block fronts about 1.5 kilometres of the Gwabegar-Baradine Road and runs approximately 2.5 kilometres west to adjoin the eastern edge of the Pilliga West state forest.

Joyce tells Fairfax Media the purchase was driven by one overriding factor: price. A divorce had forced the Worrells into the sale and Joyce, who had sold his accountancy business in St George, Queensland, for his move to Parliament, saw the property advertised in The Land newspaper while he was driving to Moree.

''My motivation was plain and simple - it was what I could afford,'' Joyce says. ''I came from the land and I want to go back to the land after politics.''

A story in The Age in July 2006 quotes the new senator as saying he was attempting to grow wheat and barley at his new weekend retreat.

''Is it a wheat district? It is now,'' he joked. ''It looks a lot like grass, and apparently if you leave it long enough you can harvest it.''

That experiment must have failed because Joyce now refers to the land as his cattle and sheep station - although there is little sign, when Fairfax Media visits the property, of even a homestead on the block. A small flock of sheep could be seen from the fence line.

In February 2008, the Joyces made another purchase, buying the neighbouring, slightly smaller, block. Sale documents show this purchase was more expensive, bought for $342,000 from Baradine sisters Natasha and Erin Kelley. Joyce says this purchase was to ''square off the block'' - making a total 2400 acres. But the expanded holdings of the senator, whose public profile as a maverick politician was growing, had become a source of some fascination in the surrounding farming communities.

The juiciest rumour - and one still being fanned by Tony Windsor in June before he stepped out of the election battle with Joyce for the seat of New England - was that the land would have to be bought back to build the inland railway, which is a long-term infrastructure policy of the National Party.

The proposed 1700-kilometre line would in fact cut through Gwabegar in a section between Coonamble and Narrabri, according to the government's most recent rail alignment study.

However, there is no indication in detailed local mapping by rail engineers dating back to 2006 that the line would actually cross the Joyce properties. It would run just metres away from the front fence using a section of the abandoned Gwabegar line.

The other theory among locals is that Joyce must have bought with plans to cash in on mineral wealth in the area.

Denis Todd, a farmer from nearby Baradine and a Warrumbungle Shire councillor, recalls a conversation he had with Joyce at a petrol station in about 2009.

''I asked him, 'Why did you buy that mongrel country out there? You could have bought better grazing land closer to St George [four hours away from Gwabegar by road],''' Todd says.

According to Todd, he asked Joyce if he had bought to take advantage of the coal known to run throughout the Pilliga. Todd says Joyce responded: ''The coal's too deep but there's plenty of gas there.''

''I don't know whether he bought it because of coal seam gas or what.

''I thought they would put a coal mine there but they didn't,'' says Todd, who supports coal seam gas and would happily allow miners on his property.

Fairfax Media spoke to a successful farmer and exporter from a nearby area. The man, who did not wish to be named, said he was anonymously posted an aerial photograph of the Joyce properties and other title deed information.

''This is scalded country. It could not support the number of animals that would be needed to make a return on investment,'' he says. ''It is a strange buy, put it that way.''

Joyce says he knew nothing of coal seam gas in the area at the time he bought both properties and ''denies categorically'' he had any knowledge of anything that could drive up the value of the land.

Like many other farmers, he says, he would be surprised and upset when a coal seam gas company came knocking at his gate five years later.

A year before the Joyces came to the Pilliga, a company called Eastern Star Gas had begun pursuing in earnest a mission to make the Pilliga a resource for NSW to rival South Australia's giant Moomba gas field.

The Pilliga forest grows on sandstone, filtering water entering the Great Artesian Basin. But along with the sandstone there is coal below the Pilliga.

The pockets of methane that the coal produces - referred to as coal seam gas (CSG) - could power the state for hundreds, if not thousands, of years if tapped, or create billions in export dollars.

In 2005, Eastern Star revealed it had already spent $50 million exploring the Pilliga, mainly around Narrabri, since 2001.

At a time when few people had even heard the term ''coal seam gas'', the company had plans for 1100 gas wells dotted across the Pilliga, feeding a $150-million pipeline to the Hunter Valley. CSG wells are normally spaced 500 metres to one kilometre apart, so the area of the Pilliga to be tapped would be vast under Eastern Star's plans at that time. By 2005, Eastern Star was already feeding into the northern NSW electricity grid through its CSG-fired Wilga Park power station.

In February 2007, the company boasted in an update to the Australian Securities Exchange that it had conducted one of the largest ''fracking'' programs in Australia by drilling nine wells and fracturing the coal seam to access the gas.

Fracking has since become a byword for environmental vandalism by CSG companies and is banned in NSW.

Those wells were located in the Bibblewindi state forest on the eastern edge of the Pilliga - perhaps 40 kilometres from Gwabegar through the forest.

Joyce's property at Gwabegar lies inside the ''petroleum exploration licence'' (PEL) areas that Eastern Star - before it was sold to Santos - owned the right to explore. Gwabegar is on the edge of PEL 238 and PEL 428, co-owned by Eastern Star with a company called Comet Ridge.

At this time, both companies were issuing positive announcements to the stock exchange in relation to the size of the gas resource in the area.

Another company, Gas Star, owned in Houston, released a statement about promising reserves in PEL 433 and 434. This meant that by 2007 - between the first two purchases made by the Joyces - CSG companies were boasting of gas reserves to the east, west and south of the properties.

All indications at this time were that the gas rush was coming.

In October 2007, Eastern Star Gas Limited announced that the former deputy prime minister (but then still-serving MP) John Anderson had been appointed chairman of the company. Anderson stepped straight out of Parliament and into the boardroom at Eastern Star to oversee its planned rapid growth phase.

Commenting on the appointment, Eastern Star managing director Dennis Morton said at the time: ''John Anderson assuming the role of ESG chairman is coincident with the transformation of the company from a natural-gas explorer to a major gas developer.''

Anderson is a political ally and personal friend of Joyce.

The former Nationals leader is working as Joyce's campaign manager in his bid to win the seat of New England in the current election.

It is the close relationship between Anderson and Joyce that has some wondering why it took Joyce until 2011 to realise he had bought into the epicentre of what was then envisaged as NSW's coming gas boom.

Anderson had been appointed chairman of Eastern Star before the Joyces' second purchase.

It was four years later at a parliamentary inquiry into CSG in July 2011 that Joyce first stated publicly that Eastern Star had an exploration licence over his property and that his neighbour had been informed that the company wanted to drill test wells in Gwabegar.

Neighbour Bruce McConaughey, who owns an 3238-hectare stud cattle farm and sheep station, says Joyce was as shocked as him.

''He was definitely against it. He rang me right back and said don't sign anything, don't do anything.''

Contacted by Fairfax Media, Natasha Kelley, who runs the Baradine Butchers and sold Joyce the second parcel of land, said she was not willing to talk about any local ''gossipy shit'' about why the Joyces came to Gwabegar.

Joyce maintains he had ''no knowledge at all'' that the Pilliga would be at the eye of the CSG rush when he bought his land.

In a recorded interview, he says, jokingly: ''I'm happy to sell it, it's for sale.'' Adding: ''If someone wants to take it off my hands and make a million dollars, go right ahead.''

Later, Joyce reveals that he has instructed a local land agent to sell if he can get the right price. He says he understands the ownership could be ''viewed as a conflict of interest''.

Before any investor jumps at the ''goldmine'' being offered by Joyce, it should be understood that the situation in 2013 is a lot different to 2007 when Eastern Star dreamed of well heads dotted across the Pilliga.

In November 2011, gas giant Santos bought out Eastern Star. By December that year it conceded that the company had breached environmental controls in its hurry to expand. Santos committed $20 million to clean up test sites in the Pilliga - some of which had killed animals and left polluted water behind on the surface.

As it faces bitter opposition to its plans in more fertile and more populated areas, such as the black soil Liverpool plains, Santos has recently resumed its focus on the Pilliga area.

But at this stage, the first expansion will occur in the eastern Pilliga close to Narrabri - its first choice reserve.

A Santos worker who spoke to Fairfax Media said drills further west had proved less promising than at Bibblewindi, where the company sought state government permission in June to add a further 18 core and test wells. A test drill at Come By Chance, north-west of the Joyce property, did not indicate reserves that had been hoped-for five years ago.

It remains to be seen whether Gwabegar will play a part when the big expansion in CSG progresses.

Whether it be beneath the pasture at home or in ''lock the gate'' blockades across NSW, the CSG issue will not be going anywhere for Joyce or the Nationals in the coming years.

Party elders, including Anderson, have been criticised for aligning too closely with mining interests over the traditional farming constituency. Mark Vaile, who succeeded Anderson as National Party leader, became a chairman of Nathan Tinkler's ill-fated Aston Resources when he left Parliament. Former NSW leader Ian Armstrong worked as a lobbyist for AGL.

The party has bled some support to the Greens over the issue of CSG. Penny Blatchford, a cotton and grain farmer from an area south of Moree, will line up third on the Greens senate ticket in NSW.

Joyce has never expressed outright opposition to CSG.

Since the parliamentary inquiry of 2011, he has spruiked the need for prime agricultural land to be left alone, water resources to be left untainted but, most importantly, according to him, that the landowner is well remunerated for mining his or her land.

Joyce has proposed that a landowner get 1 per cent of the well head revenue of a CSG well.

The best performing well in Queensland produces $1 million a day but an average CSG well is worth about $60,000 a day.

At that metric, a single well would earn a landholder more than $200,000 a year before tax - enough to completely reshape the value of land in marginal areas throughout the Pilliga - like Gwabegar.

Joyce points out there are mining exploration licences over large swaths of NSW and coal and gas under a property is no assurance that it will ever be mined. ''There's coal under everywhere, that's just a statement of fact. If you find coal, you find gas.''

Very interesting Plan B. Thanks for putting that up. It’s beyond me how any farmers could keep voting for him because he does not support them one iota. He has long been in the pocket of the mining companies and so has his mate Matt Canavan, hence their unrelenting support for Adani.

Yes, Robi -- I think he gets his votes from the many NON-thinkers and big drinkers that he spends time with -- he is rarely seen without a beer in his hand and that seems to appeal to quite a lot of people and by the colour of his face the drink is not doing him any good either.  

For heaven's sake, he used to be a bouncer and now he is DPM!!!!!!

"A bouncer"!!!!!!!!! silly woman, you should be praising someone  who improved his position in life, not insulting him.

The Queen of England was a truck mechanic during the war, off with her head,  LOL

OY VEY -  my head is spinning reading all that literature. 

A varied career, much the same as many.

Barnaby Joyce attended the University of New England and graduated with a Bachelor of Financial Administration in 1989. 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.

For an interesting take on BJ’s affair read this excellent article by Julia Baird:

The remarkable privilege of being a male politician - The Sydney Morning Heraldwww.smh.com.au › Comment15 hours ago 

Thanks for that Robi,  interesting,  I must say I have never seen Turnbull quite lost for words and we can BET there was quite a deal of OUR money used by BJ

Barnaby Joyce has certainly had some interesting stances Vs actions over time that seem to belie his political rhetoric, have just read about another … Gardasil.

Not, I might add, that it makes him any different to a lot of pollies whose values seem to 'sway in the wind' depending upon their own political survival.

Gardasil is a vaccine which would prevent the spread of human papilloma virus (HPV) that causes nearly 70% of cervical cancers. To be truly effective, girls must be vaccinated before they become sexually active. It had the potential to stop HPV and therefore cervical cancer in its tracks.

The conversation in government was intense. To put the drug on the vaccination schedule would cost a bomb – but it would also ensure that cervical cancer deaths would plummet. Even Tony Abbott, then the Health Minister, with three daughters of his own, eventually thought it was a good idea. John Howard was in favour. A truckload of money but worth it to save lives.

But not Joyce. He insisted MPs should be allowed to debate its "social implications" and that the decision should not be left to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Joyce said, "There might be an overwhelming backlash from people saying, `Don't you dare put something out there that gives my 12-year-old daughter a licence to be promiscuous'."

Source.

Yet another hypocritical statement from this creep RnR.

Ray I was not putting bouncers down --- I was just really meaning that BJ has not lost the bouncer type personality -- not something you would expect a DPM to have

As I said above PlanB, saying one thing and doing another seems to be part and parcel of being in politics and power ... and ever since time began from what I can see doing the On this Day thing.

Only difference now that I can see, is that opposing individuals don't openly kill their opposition like Caesar/Brutus, Nero/Britannicus, Robert the Bruce, the Borgias, etc. etc.

Lets all just forget it and get on with our lives.  Enough is enough.

Some people have said he made “a mistake”. He didn’t make a mistake he made “a choice”. We all have the opportunity to make such choices but some of us put others first, considering how our actions may cause pain, and some put themselves first without seriously and empathically considering the consequences of their actions.

Even if his wife was someone like Thea?

the guy could have been suffering for decades 

If you have no love for your partner and suffer in a relationship for decades why would you stay? Do you think it is better to stay with a partner causing you misery until you can find someone else to screw, get pregnant, and give you good reason to leave? If Barnaby did that he is p**s weak. Nothing has been relayed so far to suggest that there were problems in BJ’s relationship with his wife before he got carried away with his new love.

Call me naive ,but somehow I don’t think a BJ got Ms Campion pregnant 

Image result for love is love   ...maybe BJ is human after all

Wow

maybe these days even kissing can get you pregnant let alone BJ’s 

I wonder how many babies I have out there

must be in the thousands 

Getting pregnant is purely a choice by women 

Yes agree Brocky

but if all men got nicked at birth, there would not be this problem  Image result for smiley lol face

Or you or I to have this discussion ..

His business, not ours, as long as the taxpayer isn't paying anything for it.  Let's face it, if he wasn't in parliament, no-one would even know.  At the end of the day, he's not the only one who "can't keep in it their pants" and that applies to people of both sexes.

sex with barnaby?  what a revolting idea.

http://www.theshovel.com.au/2018/02/08/calls-for-national-sick-day-after-nation-forced-to-imagine-barnaby-joyce-having-sex/

Hillarious  Image result for smiley lol face

He is the most revolting thing and even before we knew about this -- just to watch his face in parliament is sickening -- he really cannot be bothered with his job and is only there for the money and what he can rip us off for, he is a repulsive thing.

Is that you Natalie?

LEAVE THE POOR BUGGER ALONE!   EVERYONE DESRVE PRIVACY...AND LOVE!

Hear Hear 

More like an oxygen thief he is utter scum!!!!!!

 

Put a sock in it, silly bat, enough is enough!!!!! Let's see a pic of your hubby and we can compare.

Image result for barnaby joyce you sexy beast caption

Personal abuse Whether to Barnaby or fellow members should stay out of reasonable discussion .

 

Is this cute little lamb safe ?

Image result for barnaby joyce sheep

Barnaby was born in Tamworth NSW . I think you might be casting aspersions on his Father which might be a Human Rights issue.. 

No Animals are safe with that scum Suze another reason why I think he is SCUM

I can not understand how anyone can not loath this scum and see that he is in it for his own good and nothing else -- he needs to be outed

Remember  the 9th Commandment "do not bear false witness against thy neighbour" or it will come back and bite you on the ar*e

should be deported to NZ

Would you like to be deported back to Poland???

This poor bugger used public money to finance his sex life, he is not a victim, he stole off the Australian tax payer.  If a normal worker used his Corporate Credit Card to set up his girlfriend he would be arrested.

Now we find out that he has a businessman paying his accomodation bills to the amount of thousands of dollars.  It wasn't so long ago that the rabid right was saying that a politician having his bills paid for him was the worst thing in the world.

Suze, by the look on his face, I think it is too late to worry about the lamb, and he is intent on doing to the tax payer what he did to the lamb.

Kali-G, love is what got him into this mess, I believe in love, but it has to be financed by yourself, not the tax payer.

Reagan,

You obviously find Barnaby Joyce attractive ...

Others do not.

 

Remember the 7th Commandment:

 

                    Image result for keep  it in your pants

 

 

Amanda Devine

February 11, 2018 12:00am

 

 

…….People who admired him will probably still vote for him.

But they will change their calibration of his character. He is no longer admirable.

Despite criticism of the Daily Telegraph and its political editor Sharri Markson for breaking the story, it’s not the media’s job to keep politicians’ secrets or prop up a false image.

Barnaby is the deputy Prime Minister. He had a brand as a social conservative. That does not accord with getting your staffer pregnant and deserting your family.

Voters deserve to know the character of their candidates because it gives an insight into how they will behave in office. If you can’t be faithful to your wife, you can’t be trusted to keep your promises in office, and you appear to lack judgment.

The man in the pub in Inverell who angered Barnaby last year by reportedly saying “Say Hello to your mistress” was just expressing the disdain and disappointment so many people now feel about Barnaby.

He can’t knock the hat off every voter who feels that way, and he can’t shame the media into burying his misdeeds.

He has just added to the soup of disillusionment in politics. And there is a cost for everyone.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/the-true-cost-of-barnabys-actions-is-staggering/news-story/96bc850b8f6d2b77c8d7768c2c6befa2

DArn right!

It has never been trustworthy in office or out

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