John Barilaro has announced the National party will run a candidate in the seat of Port Macquarie against the sitting MP, Leslie Williams, who defected to the Liberals during a stoush over koala policy.
The deputy premier was speaking in Port Macquarie on Tuesday, just weeks after the government shelved a land-clearing bill that was put to the parliament as part of a compromise between the Coalition parties.
He said Port Macquarie was held by the Nationals under the Coalition agreement and the party was entitled to contest the seat at the 2023 state election.
“This is about the people of Port Macquarie and giving them the best possible representation at the next election,” he said.
“Communities across Port Macquarie have been subjected to a political yo-yo over the years with their local member jumping ship and not delivering what they were elected to deliver.
“The people of Port Macquarie deserve to make this choice.”
Earlier Barilaro told radio station 2GB that Williams’ decision to join the Liberals should be tested at an election.
“You were elected as a National party member – our party has represented that seat for the past 10 years,” he said. “The investment that we have seen go into Port Macquarie is because of the National party fighting at the cabinet table and it’s unfair on that community, on our membership, our base.”
The NSW Nationals leader said local party members had proposed running a candidate in 2023 and the party’s base had a right to be angry at Williams’ defection.
“At the end of the day if Leslie won the seat as an independent or member of the Liberal party, so be it,” he said. “But that hasn’t occurred. Never in the history of the Coalition has this occurred.
“If anything destabilises the Coalition in this state it’s this very action. And for your actions there are consequences.”
Barilaro said he had given the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, and the deputy leader of the Liberals, the treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, a “heads up” before Tuesday’s announcement.
Guardian Australia has sought comment from Williams and Berejiklian.
The Coalition remains divided over the koala state environmental planning policy (Sepp) that nearly split the government three months ago when Barilaro and some of his Nationals colleagues threatened to move to the crossbench.
Williams resigned from the Nationals in September, saying it was no longer the party she had joined.
“The NSW Liberals and Nationals have delivered unprecedented investment across the Port Macquarie electorate and to put this in jeopardy and hold the premier and the government to ransom during this Covid-19 pandemic was unnecessary, unhelpful and frankly politically reckless and unreasonable,” she said.
Last month Berejiklian sacked parliamentary secretary Catherine Cusack after she crossed the floor to back an inquiry into a compromise bill that would have exempted private rural landholders from having to recognise the expanded definition of koala habitat under the Sepp.
The government has effectively shelved the bill and said it would develop a koala policy in the new year.
In the meantime, koala policy has reverted to a previous Sepp that takes koala protections back 25 years, reducing the number of feed trees identified as important for the species from 123 to 10.
