David 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.

David Ean Leyonhjelm ( "lion-helm"; born 1 April 1952) is an Australian former politician.

Politically, Leyonhjelm was a member of Young Labor during the 1970s with the goal of ending compulsory military conscription.

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.

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".

He later joined the Liberal Party, but resigned his membership in 1996 in protest against the stricter firearm laws introduced by John Howard.

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.

Running for the Australian Senate in New South Wales at the 2013 federal election, Leyonhjelm was elected to the fifth of six vacancies.

The Liberal Democrats polled 3.91 percent of the first-preference vote based on five states, receiving 523,831 primary votes above the line in NSW.

The result for the LDP in New South Wales was partly attributed to the "donkey vote", because the party occupied the first position on a ballot paper with a record number of candidates.

Confusion with the Liberal Party of Australia and other similarly-named parties was also thought to have played a part, with a writer in The Age suggesting Leyonhjelm was "probably the only senator elected because people mistook his party for another".

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.

Leyonhjelm assumed his seat on 1 July 2014, and was sworn in on 7 July, making his maiden speech during the same week.

In the first sitting week, he successfully moved to have the government's Clean Energy (Income Tax Rates and Other Amendments) Bill considered by itself, instead of being grouped with other legislation.

The bill, which subsequently failed to pass, would have repealed personal income tax cuts that were to be introduced as compensation for the carbon tax.

In September 2014, he announced that Helen Dale, a writer and lawyer who won the Miles Franklin Award in 1995 (as Helen Demidenko), would be a senior adviser on policy matters.

In November 2014, Leyonhjelm introduced as a private member's bill a Freedom to Marry Bill, which would allow same-sex marriage.

Leyonhjelm was criticised following the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis when he argued that Australians should be allowed greater access to weapons for self defence.

He put the view that the outcome may have been different if at least some citizens were allowed to be armed.

In August 2015 Leyonhjelm negotiated a deal to include a 12-month sunset clause on the temporary ban on importing the Adler lever action shotgun.

The Government imposed the ban in July, while it reviewed the technical specifications of weapons in the wake of the Martin Place Siege.

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.

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.