He’s the politician who threatened to kill a Hollywood star’s dogs.

And you can always expect a headline-grabbing quip whenever Barnaby Joyce fronts the cameras.

But the cabinet minister and deputy leader of the Nationals has a message for the haters.

• I wish I’d been told earlier: Joyce
• Q&A ban like ‘Soviet Russia’ 

“I am what I am,” Mr Joyce told the National Press Club on Monday.

“I’m not going to change for any purpose, design or desire.”

Mr Joyce was responding to speculation his party leader Warren Truss could be considering retirement soon.

That would mean he’d one day take the mantle of Deputy Prime Minister and run the country when the nation’s leader was overseas.

Was he capable of such a post, given criticism of his loose tongue, not just outside but perhaps within coalition ranks?

“I hope people understand that I put my heart and soul into what I do,” Mr Joyce said.

The response came on the same day the minister bowed to the Prime Minister’s instruction to cancel a scheduled appearance on the controversial Q&A program to sell his agriculture white paper.

It’s the third intervention from Tony Abbott’s office since the sacking of his department head Paul Grimes, and what the opposition claims is the tightly-controlled release of the long-awaited agriculture blueprint.

Mr Joyce’s response to the Q&A edict was delivered in typical style.

“That’s life, you take it on the chin,” he said.

As attention was largely focused on Q&A, Mr Joyce’s personal story of living life on the land almost got lost.

He spoke of his mother running the farm household, his father, who’d meticulously run through the books when the family borrowed money, and calling out to his older brothers as they rode out to muster.

Whatever his critics, the minister managed to snatch more worldwide headlines and sell Australia’s biosecurity system earlier this year with his message to actor Johnny Depp and his two dogs to “bugger off” out of the country.

“You just have to manage to put up with my little quirks,” Mr Joyce said.

-AAP