Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce: an inside look at the cunning political cat with nine lives

His tie slightly askew as he sits at his desk in his Tamworth electoral office, Mr Joyce insists that he's done with the bright lights and colour pieces on national telly.

He's ready to get on with it.

By most accounts he's not well-liked; Johnny Depp compared him to a tomato and a quick Google search of his name returns Barnaby Joyce: wife, news, baby, partner, children, net worth, Twitter and new wife - in that order.

After a very public affair, a failed marriage, a resignation, sexual harassment claims he categorically denies as "spurious and defamatory" and a reinstatement, he's the political cat with nine lives and frankly he doesn't care if the public likes him or not.

"I've probably come back to the batting crease as a veteran player," he says, "I don't pretend to be as fit as a 20-year-old but I'm 20 times more cunning.

"In a funny way I take it as a little bit of a badge of honour.

"As you've seen from the way I have lived my political life: a) I don't want to be liked by everybody and b) I don't mind if I lose my job."

With a remarkable net likeability rating of minus 29 per cent, he has to have thick skin.

And lost his job he has, a few times. The first hurdle was a by-election in 2017 when the High Court came knocking over the so-called Citizen Seven.

Joyce's father was born across the Tasman in New Zealand - making him a citizen of the country by default.

He took the whack, nominated for the seat of New England, won it back with a massive majority and celebrated with a couple of sherbies with then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Things were looking up. Until they weren't.

Photos of former staffer Vikki Campion exploded onto the front cover of The Daily Telegraph and with it, Joyce's marriage.

Given the chance to do things differently, only a fool would make the same mistakes twice, Joyce says. He doesn't regret where he ended up but how he went about it.

"I think to say my life has been perfect and there's nothing I would change, that's an incredible statement of pride," he says.

"I think with most people who go through the personal tragedy of divorce, I think if you spoke to their heart, what they really want to do is make the best of a bad situation and make sure we all get along as best we can. And I've tried to do that.

"You take a lot of pain, you carry a lot of guilt, you're always desperately concerned about who you've hurt and in a way you have to get over it, because you have to get on with it."

In his cabinet, Joyce points out that three of the four Nats in his group are divorced.

"Maybe that says something about politics," he says.

Still at the centre of a political storm brought on by his affair with a pregnant Ms Campion, his white-knuckled grip on leadership loosened when he was accused of sexual harassment by former WA Rural Woman of the Year, Catherine Marriot.

Joyce categorically denies the claims and an internal Nationals investigation into the matter was inconclusive, but as the pressure mounted Joyce says he knew the public wouldn't be satisfied until they drew blood.

So on an overcast day in Armidale in 2018, surrounded by national media who had likely never visited the Apex lookout before, he resigned.

He worked in the phrase "weatherboard and iron" enough times for a Telegraph journalist to turn to this local reporter and ask: "What's the weatherboard nine?"

Turns out it was the name of Joyce's upcoming book.

"I felt that it was all getting too much for my party," he says.

"Even though the last part, as I said, is a spurious, defamatory allegation which I say to this day, unless someone wants to print it and take it to a policeman I stand by my statement.

"But I knew I was damaging my party, I knew I had to do the right thing and step down - even though I could try to justify myself at the dispatch box I knew where this was politically going to end up so I had to spend my time in Coventry and I spent over three years there."

Asked if he has a problem with women, Joyce gestures a nonchalant hand towards the door, saying, "it's not as if people are running out of the building screaming".

It's an interesting metric - the perception not enough to deter the Nationals from a spill in June that panned out in Joyce's favour.

The Twittersphere was gobsmacked.

Joyce, who'd denied knowledge of a spill that morning on the Today Show, not so much.

"I was sitting there and people called a spill behind me," he says.

"All I know is that a spill was called. I always said I'd stand, and I stood, and I won - that was it."

Sitting in Joyce's Tamworth office for about 10 minutes before our scheduled interview, the photographer and I take in the unassuming boardroom decor as he wraps up a call with the Prime Minister about COVID-19.

In his third shot at Deputy PM, Joyce tells us he knows the machinery of government and how to insert himself into the debate to get the better outcome for his people - regional people.

His bullish attitude might not sit well with the latte-sippers of inner-city Melbourne or the front page of The Canberra Times, he says, but he maintains his aggressive confidence and bullet-proof self-assertion is how he gets things done.

"You can be the politician of blue, sunny days and frolicking puppies - the answer is going to be inoffensive, it's going to be ambiguous, inoffensive answers that are never going to get you anywhere and that's the same display of any capacity in cabinet or government," he says.

"They're never going to get anything built, never going to drive an agenda, never going to make things happen because they want to be liked by everyone and they want to keep their job."

He seems to accept that people don't like him and on a deeper level seems to take pride in it.

Read also:

There's a sort-of underdog narrative he tells about himself, convinced in his usual determined way that the Australian public are ready to forgive him.

"It's part of the Australian psyche," he says.

"It's the great thing about Australia. The Australian psyche is not one that throws people in the waste paper bin - you'll take a kick up the backside but it's up to you whether you want to come back."

A great lover of sporting analogies (and admittedly not bad at them), Joyce says the story isn't about the person who got dropped from first grade to third, it's how they get themselves drafted back at the top.

At what he calls "the back-end" of his career, Joyce says his goal is to transition the party - do a good job for maybe a term and then set up the Nationals with a whole suite of new potential leaders who've been blooded on the front bench.

"You try to make sure you put your party in a position so that, like an accountancy practice or a family property, that it doesn't die with you, that it moves on to the next generation and that's another part of what I'm trying to achieve here," he says.

"The thing that attracted me still drives me now. As a kid I put all the NRMA road maps on the wall and I just learnt it, I learned the whole lot and I knew about all these little towns.

"That's why I get a lot of pride, in a way, doing my media from Danglemah which, at the start people laugh and chuckle and make jokes about it. But suck it up, I live in Danglemah."

He wants Australia to know about Weabonga, Limbri and Woolbrook and takes pride in the fact that the office of Deputy Prime Minister comes from one of those places.

His third time around he's more hard-headed, he's not interested in having jokes with the fast-bowler trying to take his head off when he's at the other end of the wicket.

"What people don't want you to do is sulk and wallow in your grief; they don't like that," he says.

"I'm here because of the tenacity and blessing of my colleagues who, in an Australian manner, said they would give this fella another go.

"I thank them for putting their trust in me, I thank the Australian people. More people on the street say, 'let's get over it, let's get on with it and back into it'."

He's back, whether you like him or not.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: