The one thing to know about me, says Barnaby Joyce, "I won't be pushed around".
"And if you're gonna push me around," he tells Australian Story, "I'll fight back."
The former leader of the federal Nationals is talking about his final stages with the party, a rancorous period during which his one-time media adviser, now wife, Vikki Campion, says he was "treated so badly".
That's true, Joyce says, but admits, "I rose to the challenge, too".
"I responded likewise," he says, of the febrile months after he was deposed as leader by David Littleproud and demoted to the backbench.
"That's my nature. Especially when I feel like, you know, to be quite frank, I'm probably stronger than you, and probably smarter than you."
It's a telling insight into the psyche of the man, now that he is playing second fiddle to One Nation's Pauline Hanson, a dogmatic politician who has survived her own share of bruising internal party battles.
Since Joyce defected to One Nation late last year, speculation has been rife that Australia's former deputy prime minister has designs on taking the leadership from Hanson, 72.
Joyce, 59, rejects that.
"One Nation is Pauline's fish and chip shop," Joyce says, harking back to his new boss's small business before entering politics. "Make no mistake about that. Pauline doesn't have to worry about watching her back."
Some of his former colleagues are not convinced.
Littleproud, who took the Nationals leadership from him in 2022, says Joyce always wants to lead.
"Barnaby has never given up the desire to lead, no matter what organisation he's in," he says.
Former Nationals senator John "Wacka" Williams concurs, calling Joyce a "king rat" for deserting the Nationals.
"Without the National Party, he'd still be an accountant out in St George and to think he just ratted on us and betrayed us after all we'd done for him, I think it's unforgivable," Williams says.
Joyce, though, rejects the notion his move to One Nation is an act of revenge against his former colleagues.
"Revenge has some sort of venom that you're going to actually hurt people," he says. "I don't want to hurt people … but I'm not going to be pushed around."
The fusion of Joyce and Hanson — two big personalities with a history of internal party rifts — into one party has many pundits expecting fireworks.
Patricia Karvelas, the host of the ABC's Afternoon Briefing, says while it would be of mutual benefit for the duo to stay unified, "if you ask anyone across the political divide, the view is that they will have a fallout".
"It's about when, not if," she says.
Joyce has just dismounted his horse after helping drive cattle to the site of a campdraft event in his NSW electorate of New England but he won't be competing.
His reason? "I'd embarrass myself."
There's a slight pause before a stockman says with dry country wit, "You've done it before."
Barnaby nods as everyone chuckles.
"I've certainly done that," he says. "I could write a book about the times I have embarrassed myself."
There was that time in 2024 when the then Nationals frontbencher was filmed drunk and sprawled across a Canberra street, swearing into his phone.
Then there was the recent live 7.30 interview that was stunningly punctuated by Joyce yelling "sit down" to his dog, just as host Sarah Ferguson asked if the One Nation recruit was comfortable with the direction Hanson was taking him on issues such as race and tolerance.
And, most personally, there was that time in 2018 when Joyce says he and Campion became "an item of fascination/ridicule" when it was revealed that they were having an affair and she was pregnant.
Joyce had only just been reappointed as deputy prime minister at the time after being forced to contest a by-election following the revelation that, although he was born in Tamworth, he was a New Zealand citizen by descent and had dual citizenship, making his election invalid.
The revelation of the affair via a front-page photograph of a heavily pregnant Campion led the then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to hold a press conference in which he denounced Joyce and announced the controversial "bonk ban" for staffers and politicians.
The public flaying of Joyce led to the disintegration of his relationship with Turnbull.
Joyce — who just two months earlier had announced his separation from Natalie, his then-wife and mother of his four daughters — was furious with Turnbull.
"I had no problems with him hurting me," Joyce says. "I had a huge problem with him hurting everybody else. And that's what he did."
Campion says she was "dehumanised" after the affair went public. She felt under siege, moving house three times in her third trimester to escape the media.
"When Malcolm Turnbull did the press conference, I was suicidal," she says, still visibly upset by memories of that turbulent time.
"I think the only time I was happy over that period was when I had a solid plan to end it all."
Soon after the Turnbull press conference, a West Australian woman claimed she had been sexually harassed by Joyce two years earlier.
Within days, Joyce resigned as Nationals leader and deputy prime minister. The National Party investigated but made no finding due to insufficient evidence. Joyce vehemently denies the allegation.
Campion recalls little of that time, she says, because she was "completely and utterly broken". She was not convinced then that she and Joyce would have a future together.
When their son, Sebastian, was born in April 2018, she suffered postpartum depression.
"People were like, 'Why didn't you and Barnaby do this? Why didn't you and Barnaby do that?' Well, to me, I didn't think there was a me and Barnaby. I loved Barnaby, but I didn't think that I would be raising this child with Barnaby."
She credits being alive today with a woman named Carol who ran a motel in Queanbeyan, outside Canberra, where Campion stayed.
"She stopped a lot of bad things," Campion says. "I think she stopped the worst thing from happening … She really gave me a safe place. She helped look after [Sebastian]. She helped look after us."
Joyce and Campion are now married, living in the manager's quarters of his late parents' property near his hometown of Woolbrook, with Sebastian and their second son, Thomas.
"After I got divorced … I just wanted to come home, you know," Joyce says. "It was very good of Vikki to come back."
By June 2021, Joyce was leader of the Nationals again, becoming deputy prime minister to the then-PM, Scott Morrison, after ousting Michael McCormack in a spill.
Joyce says he "clawed my way back" because "I believed I could do the job but also to sort of redeem myself".
But his return as Nationals leader required a massive compromise and some fancy footwork that, ultimately, tripped him up.
Joyce, who does not believe Australian action can make a difference in combating climate change, had long argued against a net zero emission target by 2050.
But Morrison and the Liberal Party, the Nationals' senior coalition partner, were under global pressure to sign up to the target in the lead-up to climate talks in Glasgow in late 2021.
To deliver the Nationals' support, Joyce negotiated a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure deal with Morrison, giving the Nationals fodder for the regions in the upcoming election.
Then he voted against the deal in the party room.
Littleproud says the manoeuvre didn't sit well with some Nationals members, who were "a bit surprised" he presented a deal to support net zero, rather than argue against the target and stick to his principles.
The vote was tight but, says Joyce, "the number of people who wanted it were just more than the number of people who didn't. And I voted, even though I negotiated the deal, that I didn't want it".
Come the May 2022 election, the Coalition was defeated. Soon after, Joyce was challenged for the leadership by Littleproud. Joyce lost.
Says Littleproud: "After net zero, you could see that the numbers were probably not with Barnaby in the long term."
On assuming leadership, Littleproud made much of the need for "generational change" within the Nationals.
Joyce says he could read that code: he was never coming back in any position of power within the Nationals.
"I thought, 'OK, generational change is an invite to dinner with Pauline Hanson," Joyce says.
It was a slow wooing, but by the end of last year, the deal was done.
Joyce doesn't want to be hubristic, he says, but he argues his decision to join One Nation has been "an accelerant" to its rise in the polls.
"It certainly changed a lot of people's votes," Joyce says.
"It gives people licence [to vote One Nation]. So yeah, I had an effect. Was I the reason? No, that would be hubris. Did I have an effect? Most definitely."
He says that's what has made his former National Party colleagues cranky.
"It's only when it became apparent that my move to One Nation actually had a real effect that everyone said, 'Oh, this is outrageous'," he says. "The polling was going up, but then it went supercharged."
However, Littleproud says what National Party members were "sad" about was that, despite all the opportunities the party had given Joyce, he walked away when things weren't going his way.
"To take the big lows out on the movement that gave you everything, everything that you could never have achieved by yourself, I think is a reflection on him," he says. "This is a reflection of the true Barnaby Joyce."
Joyce has been considered many things in his 22 years in public life — a maverick, a buffoon and, as former prime minister, Tony Abbott, put it, "the best retail politician" in Australia. Even Campion calls him a "show pony".
But racist has never been one of his labels.
When asked how he feels about being linked to that label, given Hanson is considered by many to be racist, he answers obliquely.
"Pauline is seen as a decent person," he says. "She's a strong lady. She's gonna tell it the way it is … I'm more nuanced … When I say something, I think, 'Who could this hurt? Is that justified to say it?'"
He says there are things Hanson has done — such as wear a burqa into parliament as part of her push to have it banned — that he wouldn't do. "We all have different approaches, right?"
It has fallen to Joyce to try to smooth over some of Hanson's less temperate utterances, something political commentators have argued was, firstly, ironic, given his own capacity to create media storms, and secondly, uncomfortable for Joyce.
When Hanson came in for criticism after her podcast interview with the controversial far-right, anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, it was Joyce who fronted the cameras to say One Nation did not support the White Australia policy.
Littleproud says he does not think Joyce is racist, adding that he doesn't believe many of Joyce's values align with those of One Nation.
Still, he says, Joyce has been known to go against his principles.
"It'll be a challenging time," Littleproud says. "But what I suspect will happen is that Barnaby will soldier through because he sees a prize at the end, and the prize is leadership."
Hanson threw a curveball into that arena during the Robinson interview when she said her daughter, Lee Hanson, had "the potential" to be the next leader of the party. Joyce says that was not an endorsement by Hanson of Lee as successor, but rather an "eminently logical" expression of Lee's ability.
John Williams expects a blow-up over something. "Barnaby's all about Barnaby," he says. "That's why I think he's going to lock horns with Pauline in the future sometime."
Campion argues the opposite, saying Joyce respects Hanson and does not need to be leader "to get the things done that he needs to get done".
She says One Nation has already "moved the ledger" on immigration, forcing the LNP to sharpen its policies.
Her concern is that One Nation could become a victim of "catastrophic success", becoming too big, too fast.
"If it loses its authenticity, if it gets filled up with opportunists … I think that's the danger for One Nation going forward."
A big test will come in late November when the Victorian election is held, with One Nation's success or failure there seen as a litmus test for the federal election, due by May 2028.
The Barnaby Joyce that people will see on the hustings, the one emerging now, says Campion, is the authentic version.
"Finally, people are seeing what he actually thinks without all these gates and hinges and solidarity and what you're allowed to say and what you can't say," Campion says. "You know, he's unfiltered."
Littleproud has a different spin. "Love or hate him, he's a survivor," he says. "But, ultimately, I think the mob always works you out."
The new, unfiltered Joyce does not believe in multiculturalism. He wants migration numbers reduced dramatically. He wants those accepted into Australia to sign up to the "guardrails" of Australian culture. He wants coal-fired power stations built and the end of climate change departments.
Joyce says that without One Nation, he would have left politics. Bitterly.
But he says, "When adversity arises, you can either be broken by it or you can say, 'I'm gonna go even harder.'"
Now, he's fired up, finding his work with One Nation "very stimulating".
"I'm back on the balls of my toes," Joyce says, "and fighting."
