Former independent MP Tony Windsor has threatened to sue Barnaby Joyce if the agriculture minister does not apologise for comments about Windsor’s property dealings east of the Liverpool Plains.
The minister questioned the consistency of Windsor, who is considering running against Joyce in the seat of New England in regional New South Wales, where the approval of the Shenhua coalmine is contentious.
In an interview with ABC’s Radio National on Monday, Joyce said there was an existing mine at Werris Creek that “was formerly owned by a person called Mr Windsor who made millions and millions of dollars out of the sale of it”.
Joyce referred to reported problems with dust, noise and water.
“I think it’s just a little bit convenient when 30km away from one mine is another mine which Mr Windsor made himself a multi-millionaire out of,” he said. “Congratulations, that’s a commercial contract.”
Asked directly whether he was accusing Windsor of profiting from a policy that he was now protesting against, Joyce said: “Well I’m just stating the facts. The fact is that on, basically it was a 99-year lease, Mr Windsor turned himself into a multi-millionaire, got the place back at a peppercorn lease rate and I think he got his neighbour’s place back at a peppercorn lease rate as well.”
Windsor sent a tweet to Joyce after the interview, giving him “the opportunity to apologise”.
@Barnaby_Joyce You will of course if the matter proceeds without apology be asked to substantiate the so called facts enunciated on RN 2/2
— Tony Windsor (@TonyHWindsor) October 12, 2015
Windsor has previously defended the sale of land to a Whitehaven subsidiary in 2010, saying his family had lived next door to a coalmine.
“It was put in about 80 years ago,” he told 2GB in July.
“They [the company] wanted to extend that mine … the farmer has no right over their land if in fact a natural resource is found. On a small portion of some country that we owned, it was found. They wanted to mine it.
“If, in fact, push came to shove, they would have mined it through the land and environment court. So there’s processes that override the landholder.”
Comment was being sought from Joyce’s office.
Joyce made the comments on Monday after being asked about Windsor’s decision to join farmers in a television advertisement, coordinated by the Lock The Gate Alliance, urging the Turnbull government to revoke the Shenhua coalmine approval.
In the ad, Windsor says: “They are mega-mines over the top of the biggest groundwater system in the Murray Darling, so the risks in terms of those groundwater systems could be catastrophic.”
- This story was amended on 12 October 2015 to clarify the location of Windsor’s property.
