Joyce also describes as "creepy" the leaking of photos of him with his partner and child.
"When you go back out into public, you don't expect someone to go through the process of slyly taking a photo of you. Next time you see yourself, you're on the front page of a paper. It's invasive."
He says he does not want to be on public display "like some exotic animal in a zoo".
Barnaby Joyce has popped up on Sky News, talking about life with Sebastian, his new baby with former staffer Vikki Campion.
Joyce says he is a hands-on father:
"I think people are surprised. When I'm at home, I do all the cooking, do washing and hanging things out, just clean around the house."
Favourite meals to cook?
"Regular ritual roast that become curries that become risotto and just work my way down."
(That is the exact quote.)
Here's a handy tool for you – a calculator that shows you how much you stand to get under the government's income tax cuts:
ACT Labor has left behind the uncertainty that hung over Katy Gallagher's future and inherited a tangled preselection mess.
It may look like good luck the territory is gaining a third federal seat just as a respected Labor senator is ejected from parliament. What could have been an easy route back for the former chief minister is more fraught.
A layer of factional obligations, and another created by Labor's affirmative action rules, creates a maze of compromises and options for a party that has a firm electoral grip on the ACT.
Read the full piece here.
Crossbencher Tim Storer has just been up on Sky News.
Storer says he doesn't have a quid pro quo approach to voting on legislation but has priorities he wants to see addressed. One is increasing the "exceptionally low" Newstart allowance.
On the budget's income tax plan, he has different views on the three stages, which the government does not want to separate.
Storer's view on step one, which immediately increases tax relief for low and middle-income earners: "appropriate" and "neatly targeted" and "affordable"
But on the latter stages, it's not so rosy.
On the long-term overhaul of tax brackets, introducing a flat tax rate for earnings between $41,000 to $200,000: "This seems not appropriate. It seems regressive. It's not in line with a progressive taxation system that we have in Australia."
The bottom line: the government has a lot of support for stage one but there is hostility to this entire package being voted on together, immediately in one bit of legislation.
A little birdie just sent this ad in Tasmanian newspaper The Advocate to me.
Looks like the Liberal Party is casting a wide net for its candidates at the next election.
So feel three to get in touch with them if you're that way inclined! Maybe you can even run in the newly-triggered Braddon byelection. Labor's Justine Keay took it with a 2.2% margin at the last election so a Liberal win isn't beyond the realms of possibility.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison held a press conference a moment ago in lovely Queanbeyan, just over the border in NSW.
The battlelines are being drawn.
Turnbull says the government's tax plan "will result in more people having a go".
He says the looming byelections will be fought on a combination of local and national issues.
Morrison adds:
"The question is: do Australians want a stronger economy that guarantees essential services they rely on, provided by lower taxes right across the board? Or do they want a weaker economy because of the suffocating impact of higher taxes from Bill Shorten?"
Turnbull says "the gap between the Labor Party and the Coalition has never been greater".
Will the citizenship crisis never end?
The latest casualties: one Labor senator, three lower house Labor MPs, and one Centre Alliance lower house MP. There will now be a "super Saturday" of byelections after the High Court's ruling on Wednesday.
The contests are quickly being framed as a test for the major parties' leaders and policy agendas. After all, it is only two days since the 2018 budget was handed down, outlining its centrepiece income tax plan that would roll out in three stages over seven years.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will tonight give his budget-in-speech, laying out Labor's competing agenda.
Here's a rundown of the major stories in politics this morning:
1. The government faces an unprecedented public test of its $140 billion tax cut plan as five byelections loom, reports chief political correspondent David Crowe.
2. High income earners will be the biggest beneficiaries of the government's tax cuts in a major reshaping of the taxation system that will eventually cost the budget $17.8 billion a year. Story from economics reporter Eryk Bagshaw here.
3. The government and opposition are playing down the possibility of a referendum to resolve the citizenship crisis. Story here.
4. ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie has suggested the government could face a political backlash over funding cuts. Media reporter Jennifer Duke has the story.
5. Australian firms that do business in Iran could be punished under secondary sanctions that would prevent them selling to the United States after President Donald Trump announced he was pulling out of the Obama-era Iranian nuclear deal. National security correspondent David Wroe reports.
6. Patrick Gorman, the state secretary for the Labor party in Western Australia and former advisor to Kevin Rudd, will be the party's sole nominee to contest the byelection in the federal seat of Perth. Story from Latika Bourke.
7. John Howard has joined leading business figures in calling for Newstart payments to be increased after Tuesday's budget delivered no extra benefits to the unemployed and clamped down further on welfare recipients. Eryk Bagshaw reports.
And here is some expert analysis and opinion on those big stories:
"Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison look like they want a fight over tax cuts more than they want the tax cuts themselves."
"...the bottom line is that the decision – described as 'hardline' and 'unworkable' by legal experts – is a headache for politicians of all stripes."
Mark Kenny: "Politicians who took no steps to sever ties are constitutionally no different from those who had conscientiously tried to comply at the earliest opportunity."
Peter Martin: "Ahead of the budget we were promised simple cuts. What we got was a collection of changes so eccentric they are almost impossible to explain quickly and even harder to make sense of quickly."
: "The US has generally played the role of international security guarantor, but Donald Trump's America has just become a rogue nation."
My name is Fergus Hunter – you can find me on Facebook and Twitter. Photos today from Alex Ellinghausen and Dominic Lorrimer.
Let's get into it.