Barnaby Joyce: Email that could bring down the deputy PM was sent on August 7 at 12.31pm

Barnaby Joyce’s troubles started one week ago when Fairfax Media contacted his office with a series of detailed questions.

‘Last Monday I got a phone call from a normally reliable source. With the section 44 wrecking ball still swinging through Parliament, the source suggested I might want to take a closer look at Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s citizenship.

My first reaction was to laugh. Joyce had been in Parliament since 2004, serving in both chambers. He’d risen to the second most powerful office in the land. Surely he’d done his due diligence? Plus, Joyce was a guy who prided himself in being authentically Aussie. The thought he might secretly be a Kiwi was almost too outlandish to contemplate.

Almost.

The fear of getting scooped is a powerful motivator in journalism. So I quickly started digging, establishing that Joyce’s father – James Joyce – had been born in the South Island city of Dunedin in 1924. He was born a British subject but New Zealand citizenship laws made him a New Zealand citizen. The same laws – the British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948 – said: “A person born after the commencement of this Act shall be a New Zealand citizen by descent if his father was a New Zealand citizen.”

Source: Barnaby Joyce citizenship: Email that could bring down the deputy PM was sent on August 7 at 12.31pm