idealist, The

Intheblack, Nov 2006 by Blondell, Jackie

Barnaby Joyce's small Senate office suite is full of children. His wife and four daughters are visiting Canberra from Queensland. There's toast being made in the kitchenette and Playschool on the television - a long way from the high-powered image that life in the Senate normally evokes.

"So, where are you from?" Joyce asks politely. When told it's INTHEBLACK, he brightens. "Unreal," he murmurs, as if this is distant but familiar territory for him compared to the Machiavellian world he currently inhabits.

Before running the political race and helping the Coalition win a majority in the Senate for the first time in 23 years, Joyce was possibly the best-known accountant in St George, population 3000. Now he's one of the best-known and most contentious characters on the political stage. "I've got 650 personal emails in my inbox," he sighs. "As quickly as I deal with them, more turn up. The majority are not from Queensland. They need to approach their own state senators," he says. "I even had people in here a while ago, I couldn't help them, as they were not from my state. I told them to go down the corridor to their senator. They said they didn't know [him] and I said, 'Well you voted for him'."

Joyce looks tired. But then it an understatement to say that he's been shot into the glare of the public spotlight in the short time since he entered the Senate in July 2005. Indeed, in a recent issue of The Australian Financial Review Magazine dedicated to power, Joyce earned 10th spot on the "Overt power" list.

Even before he won his seat in a closely drawn contest, Joyce was keen to weigh into a disparate range of issues. This has continued since he joined the Senate, where he has become something of a thorn in the Coalition's side. The Telstra sale debate, media ownership, the MediBank Private sale, stem cell research, mining in Antarctica, fuel prices, WorkChoices, abortion, the immigration bill and the possible Coles takeover have all claimed his attention. And he's crossed the floor twice in that time, on two radically different issues: voluntary student unionism and amendments to the Trade Practices Bill.

Though he spreads himself thin across many issues, he is passionate about a level playing field for small business, and calls for more regulation, not less. "It's a partially regulated market to the extent that it supports the incumbents," he says. "And those incumbents have the power down in Canberra to always be engendering policy to reinvigorate their position.

"The concentration you've got in the retail market [and] the concentration you've got in the fuel market [are examples of] the actual process of removal of independence from these markets."

He claims one of the most compelling Australian dreams is to go into business. "We must respect that aspiration in the Australian people in the policy format that will allow them to do it," Joyce maintains. "We can't do that if there's predatory pricing or no restrictions on how big a company can be in a market. If there's no restrictions, companies can't help themselves, they'll exert their influence in a such a manner as to keep competitors out."

Joyce believes there is a lack understanding of small business in Canberra. "A lot of people round here have no genuine experience of small business," he says. "They might have visited one but they've never built one up. There's too many solicitors down here and not enough accountants!"

He's had a taste of commerce at all levels, having worked for large and small businesses, and most recently, for himself. His career began working in tax in a small accounting firm in Moree, New South Wales. He then moved into a cost accountancy role with ConAgra, a large multinational that at the time owned Australia Meat Holdings. "I didn't enjoy that very much," he says. "Chicago meat buyers were my one client and it was very demanding for little reward."

He then spent five years in regional banking, during which he completed his CPA qualifications. "Then I decided that it was no good advising people on running a business unless I had run one myself," he says. "The greatest sense of freedom I had in my life was when I could turn up, write out my own cheques, go home when I wanted to, see who I wanted to see. I loved the freedom of being answerable to myself. And I believe that is not unique to me - that is the general aspiration of mankind."

Looking to set up in public practice, Joyce decided that he was "about 20 years too late" to start locally in Moree, an already well-established cotton town. He headed north of the border to St George, where cotton was starting to become a thriving industry.

His business began from an old shop front and he still remembers his first client: "Miss Bev Richards and I charged her $80."

Like any business starting out it was slow to grow. "I brought in $800 in my first month and it was costing me $6000 to be in business," he recalls. He slowly built up the firm's revenue.

Political life beckoned. Joyce says one of his greatest ambitions is to "bring about constructive changes to policy that actually engenders people to go into business at ground level."