Last resort

Mr Fang was asked why himself and other party members were prepared to ‘cross the floor’ over the controversial koala State Environmental Planning Policy, but no such threat had been made on issues including water management, closure of the local timber industry, or local government amalgamations which were forced in this region despite a pre-election commitment this would not occur.

He said the koala SEPP issue had the ‘‘ability to act as a handbrake on our rural and regional communities across the state’’.

Mr Fang said not every fight needs to be a ‘‘cross the floor threat’’ and that it needs to be used sparsely, so they instead ‘‘work behind the scenes’’.

However, there has been considerable local concern that The Nationals have been ineffective on key issues, and this played a significant role in their defeat in the seat of Murray at last year’s election.

Mr Fang said they initially tried to have negotiations on the koala policy ‘‘behind closed doors for up to 10 months with the relevant ministers’’, but when they were not getting the ‘‘response that we had hoped for’’, they made the threat to cross the floor.

‘‘What we have seen is that The Nationals are prepared to take decisive action on an issue that affects rural and regional communities,’’ Mr Fang told the Pastoral Times.

‘‘What we have said is that individual members, and I was one of those individual members, would judge for themselves how important it was to support their communities and what actions they will take.

‘‘There were four of us who indicated that if we were unable to get a resolution on this, we would be prepared to sit on the crossbench. As Nationals, we always reserve the right to cross the floor, but on this issue we would be prepared to sit on the crossbench. 

‘‘One of the fundamental issues, is just because it has the name koala in it doesn’t necessarily mean it will save koalas.

‘‘Comments that The Nationals are koala killers is plainly wrong. We said we want to support a vibrant and increased koala population, in fact we would love to see the doubling of koala populations.

But we can’t do that at the expense of our rural and regional communities, and our landholders and their land rights.

‘‘We have attempted to negotiate in good faith and unfortunately we were not getting the outcome we wanted. We accelerated that attempt to communicate again; no response and therefore we saw what happened as a result.’’

Avoiding specific questions about the local timber industry and the promises The Nationals made that councils would not be forced to amalgamate, Mr Fang focussed his attention on water, claiming it is his party that has made recent changes happen.

Mr Fang also took the opportunity to take a swipe at Member for Murray Helen Dalton, as he constantly tried to blame her for inaction on various issues.

‘‘The Nationals are very effective in getting agendas and issues in front of the government and getting change,’’ he said.

‘‘We have seen changes to water policy that are in line with what we have been advocating for from state and federal level which is an indication of how strong we have been on the issue and it just shows again that the local member is quite ineffective in providing real change.

‘‘It is one thing to be vocal about it, but it is another to be able to effect the change.

‘‘We are seeing those attacks from the local member about what it is The Nationals have achieved here. It is due to what I would say is guilt and inability to be able to deliver.’’

Mr Fang reiterated the threat to cross the floor of parliament is something ‘‘Nationals are prepared to do when the issue is large enough and we are getting absolutely no response’’.

‘‘We talked about how we were prepared to walk away from the Murray Darling Basin Plan and those negotiations happened; we saw the outcomes that we have seen,’’ he said.

He said things ‘‘can’t be delivered by the local member because she is outside the tent . . . she throws rocks and won’t work with anyone’’.

‘‘She is constantly negative and in a world where we want to achieve meaningful outcomes that is what we do; let us be judged on what we deliver, not what we say and I think that needs to be applied to the local member.’’