The allegation came from Opposition agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon after Mr Joyce responded on Monday to a new poll which showed he would lose New England to former independent MP Tony Windsor, who declared last week his intention to stand again in his old seat.

Mr Joyce said if Mr Windsor was to claim victory, it would mean the issues he’d been pursuing for the good of the electorate, including the relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) from Canberra to Armidale, would be lost.

“What (a win to Mr Windsor) would mean, quite obviously, is that New England would go into opposition ... and what that also means, and this is important, is that the things that I want to fight for, the real agenda of the New England – getting the APVMA with 195 jobs into Armidale, building new dams and starting the process of building new dams, continuing on with the work of upgrading the New England Highway – these are the issues that will get pushed into opposition,” he said in Tamworth on Monday. 

“I want to make sure that those issues, where you actually can deliver on them, are delivered on.” 

Last month, Mr Joyce announced the relocation of three Canberra-based research and development corporations to regional centres, but said the proposal to move the APVMA to Armidale still had to go through the process of an independent cost-benefit risk analysis, which would then be looked at further by the government.

Mr Fitzgibbon said yesterday relocating the APVMA would be a disaster and would lead to a loss of expertise.

“Staff are largely highly technical people, professionals, scientists ... have their kids in school in Canberra, and we are already seeing they are looking around for new jobs,” he told reporters in Canberra.

But Mr Joyce has defended his government’s decentralisation policy on the basis of job creation in regional areas and the synergies of locating various agencies in the agricultural communities they serve.

Mr Fitzgibbon maintained yesterday though that the chemical regulator’s customers were not farmers.

Since announcing his intentions last year, Mr Joyce has come in for criticism from the agricultural sector, including the National Farmers’ Federation, which has raised concerns about long-term impacts on the agency’s 170 staff.

NFF president Brent Finlay said the workforce included specialist regulatory scientists who would be difficult to replace, if they were forced to relocate.