FED:Windsor challenges Joyce to resign

AAP General News (Australia)
04-19-2011
FED:Windsor challenges Joyce to resign

By Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer

CANBERRA, April 19 AAP - Independent MP Tony Windsor says Barnaby Joyce should resign
his Senate seat immediately if he wants to make a tilt for the lower house and eventually
take on the Nationals leadership.

The Nationals leader in the Senate, who hails from Tamworth in Mr Windsor's rural NSW
seat of New England, says he wants to sit in the House of Representatives.

With no Queensland MP willing to step aside for him, he is eyeing off the former long-held
Nationals seat in which he and his wife grew up, his children were born and his family
still has a sheep and cattle grazing property.

Mr Windsor, who has faced a backlash in his area after delivering minority government
to Labor last year, said Senator Joyce had previously flagged a run for the lower house
but failed to live up to the rhetoric.

"I think if Barnaby Joyce is serious ... he'd want to resign his seat in the Senate
because by intending to stand in another state, he's abandoning the state that's put him
there," Mr Windsor told ABC radio.

"He'd want to put himself on the line and start campaigning as soon as possible.

"If he's not serious ... this is just an attack of attention deficit problems."

Constitutional expert Professor George Williams said Senator Joyce could continue as
a senator until he signs the electoral commission form nominating for a lower house seat.

In 1990, Australian Democrats leader Janine Haines remained a senator until the March
election was called, when she unsuccessfully stood for the South Australian lower house
seat of Kingston.

Senator Joyce, who recently campaigned in the area during the NSW state election, said
Mr Windsor's support for Labor would go against him at the federal poll due in 2013.

"Certainly, I had a lot of feedback that people were very disappointed ... about their
local member supporting a Labor-Green-independent government and that does not align with
their views of the world," Senator Joyce said.

"People almost fall over themselves to tell you about it."

The day after the 2010 federal election, when asked whether he could work with a coalition
government that included Senator Joyce, Mr Windsor said: "I don't deal with fools terribly
lightly and I think, under any definition, the man's a fool".

Senator Joyce said voters were not interested in a "personal fight" in the seat.

The former accountant's preselection is not guaranteed, with a number of locals expressing
interest in the seat, but senior party figures have expressed cautious support for the
high-profile candidate.

"Barnaby would certainly provide an important focus for us in that electorate - it's
one we must win and I'm determined we do well there," Nationals leader Warren Truss said.

NSW Nationals Senator John Williams said that while his colleague's interest in the
seat was welcome "there is a process that has to be followed and a lot can change between
now and then".

Senator Joyce said he had no intention of challenging Mr Truss for the Nationals leadership
should he win the seat, but at some stage in the future if the leader were to retire he
would throw his hat into the ring.

A spokesman for Mr Truss said the 62-year-old Queensland MP intended to contest the
2013 election.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Senator Joyce - who was earlier this year demoted
from the coalition's finance portfolio after a series of gaffes - was potentially in line
to be deputy prime minister under an Abbott government.

"What I think this means is Tony Abbott should come clean about the nature of the team
he will take into the next election," she told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Windsor, a former National, has long been an independent and holds his seat by 21.5 per cent.

AAP pjo/sb/jnb/cdh

KEYWORD: JOYCE WRAP

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