David Ean Leyonhjelm ( "lion-helm"; born 1 April 1952) is an Australian former politician. He was a Senator for New South Wales, representing the Liberal Democratic Party from 2014 to 2019. Having been elected at the 2013 federal election, he took office on 1 July 2014, and was re-elected in the 2016 full Senate election. He resigned from the Senate in March 2019 to stand for the Legislative Council at the 2019 New South Wales state election, but failed to be elected. Before being elected to federal parliament, Leyonhjelm worked as a veterinarian and then as an agribusiness consultant. He also writes columns for several Australian publications, with a concentration on rural issues.
Personal life and business career
David Leyonhjelm was born in Nhill in the Wimmera, in western Victoria and was raised in Heywood, on the dairy farm of his parents Bryan and Jean Leyonhjelm. The family is of Swedish noble origin; the 'Leijonhielm' barony was granted in 1719. He was the oldest of four children, and as a teenager trapped rabbits and worked in a shoe shop to help support his family. When he was 15, his parents separated, and he lived with his mother in Melbourne, where he attended Dandenong High School. Leyonhjelm later won a scholarship to study veterinary science at the University of Melbourne, studying alongside Denis Napthine, a future Premier of Victoria. He has since completed Bachelor of Laws and Master of Business Administration degrees at Macquarie University. After gaining his initial degree, he worked as a practising veterinarian for a time, both in Australia and overseas, and later became involved in marketing and management roles in the animal health industry.
In 1989, Leyonhjelm was a founding director of Baron Strategic Services, an agribusiness consultancy firm with which he remains involved. He later served as director of the federally funded Gene Technology Information Unit (GTIU), which was established by the Keating government to offer "accurate and unbiased advice about the new gene technologies". Leyonhjelm lives with his wife, Amanda, in Sydney, but also owns a rural property in Hargraves, a locality near Mudgee in the Central West region of NSW. A shooting enthusiast, he is the president of the Sydney-based Inner West Hunters Club, and takes pleasure in his success in winning his grade in New South Wales for several years, shooting metallic silhouette targets with small-bore pistols. Also a former secretary of the Farm Writers' Association of New South Wales, Leyonhjelm had a column in Rural Business magazine for 20 years. He also wrote a column, "Agribuzz", for Fairfax Rural Media (formerly Rural Press), and for "Business Spectator" and writes regularly in The Australian Financial Review.
Early political activities
Politically, Leyonhjelm was a member of Young Labor during the 1970s with the goal of ending compulsory military conscription. He later joined the Liberal Party, but resigned his membership in 1996 in protest against the stricter firearm laws introduced by John Howard. Leyonhjelm had been a member of the Shooters Party since 1992, and was chair for a period of five years. Having fallen out with its founder, John Tingle, he later left the party in protest at what he perceived as its increasing social conservatism and status as a "single issue party".
In 2005, after leaving the Shooters Party, Leyonhjelm became involved with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which then contested the New South Wales elections as the Outdoor Recreation Party. As secretary of the LDP, he helped the party become federally registered and helped with the campaign for the 2007, 2010, and 2013 federal elections.
Drawing 0.10 percent of the first-preference vote, Leyonhjelm unsuccessfully contested the Division of Bennelong in 2007 for the LDP, which ran as the Liberty and Democracy Party, after the Australian Electoral Commission initially refused to register it under its original name due to the use of the word "Liberal". For the Outdoor Recreation Party, he unsuccessfully contested the 2010 Penrith state by-election, drawing 1.87 percent of the first-preference vote, and then was listed first on the party's group ticket at the 2011 state election, which drew 0.75 percent as a group.