Barnaby Joyce strong in New England

The Nationals leader spoke confidently of victory at a rowdy reception at a party function in Tamworth moments after his main rival and former independent MP Tony Windsor all but conceded defeat.

With 73.4 per cent of the vote counted, Mr Joyce was well ahead with 51.9pc of the primary vote compared to Mr Windsor on 28.6pc.

The crowd chanted “Barnaby, Barnaby, Barnaby” as he walked onto the stage with his wife Natalie and daughters receiving a strong embrace from close friend and NSW Nationals Senator John “Wacka” Williams.

Mr Windsor said final votes were still to be counted and may not be known until later tonight but his chances of winning were unlikely.

“I’m disappointed it looks like we may not win - the way the numbers are looking it’s unlikely that I would win - and I will be disappointed not so much for myself but for others right across the nation who have supported me as a candidate,” he said.

“We have had many thousands of people make a financial contribution – and that says a lot and is very humbling for me to have people inside the electorate and outside the electorate making a contribution.”

Mr Windsor also thanked the media for their courtesy towards him and his family but “won’t get into all the other stuff”, in reference to ongoing tensions with The Australian newspaper.

“It has been an extraordinary campaign – the support that we’ve received not only within the electorate but across the nation,” he said.

Mr Joyce thanked National Party volunteers and said he’d taken nothing for granted since being the local MP after returning to his home where he was born, at the last election.

“We’ve done everything in our power to make New England the strongest possible seat we could make it and for the nation,” he said.

“No individual ever wins – it doesn’t work like that –a team wins.”

“This victory is not so much mine it is yours and the effort you put in.”

Mr Joyce said he didn’t want to denigrate anyone who campaigned against the Nationals saying they also had a vision for the nations’ best interests and were also decent people doing a decent job.

He congratulated the Greens, Labor party and independent volunteers for also putting in a hard days’ work during a hard campaign, with the majority of the campaign fought in the right spirit.

But the Nationals leader did criticise the role of GetUp! for “lying to people in the middle of the night”.

Mr Joyce said the left-leaning activist group had telephone vulnerable people and stated not half-truths but absolute lies, that the Coalition would privatise Medicare, which was “a disgraceful thing”.

“We were never ever going to privatise Medicare,” he said.

Mr Joyce said the nation and fourth estate – or media - needed to “hold these people to account” and ask, ‘why do you say such things, when you know absolutely and emphatically that it is not the truth?’

“Is the art of politics now to be - where the person who wins tells the biggest lie?” he said.

“That is not the nation that we live in.”

Talking to media, Mr Joyce said he’d go and mow the lawns and then go for a picnic with his family tomorrow then “the work starts”

He said the party had great things to deliver on like dams, the inland rail and Rural Investment Corporation.

But Mr Joyce declined to comment on what may be in the Coalition agreement with the Liberals, preferring to wait until polling was fully concluded.