The Victorian opposition leader, Jess Wilson, has pulled out of an event headlined by Barnaby Joyce, after the premier accused her of “cosying up” to One Nation.
A spokesperson for the Victorian opposition on Monday confirmed Wilson would no longer be speaking at the Across Victoria Alliance conference in Horsham on 9 February due to an “unavoidable scheduling conflict”.
“Our team will always take the opportunity to listen to and engage with regional Victorians, including CFA volunteers and primary producers,” the spokesperson said, adding that the leader of the Nationals, Danny O’Brien, and the Liberal leader in the upper house, Bev McArthur, would attend in Wilson’s place.
Wilson had been under pressure to withdraw from the event after Joyce’s appearance was announced in January, weeks after he defected from the Nationals to join One Nation. In the same month, the Across Victoria Alliance founder, Andrew Weideman, said several members of the group were considering standing as One Nation candidates at the November state election.
Across Victoria Alliance was set up in response to the Victorian government’s new emergency services levy and its members have also protested against the removal of third-party objection rights for renewable energy projects and expanded powers for VicGrid to access private land without consent. More recently, the group has turned its focus to the government’s bushfire response.
In her first speech to colleagues at the Labor caucus conference ahead of parliament’s return on Tuesday, the premier, Jacinta Allan, labelled the Horsham event a “misinformation convention”.
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She said Wilson was attending only to shore up party unity, pointing to the fact the Liberals have had six leaders in seven years.
“To avoid the next cut, their current leader is spending this weekend cosying up with One Nation. She’s appearing at the misinformation convention right alongside Barnaby Joyce, to oppose cheaper renewable energy that keeps power bills down,” Allan said on Monday.
“Mark my words: the Liberal National One Nation circus will push her further away from families and further towards the extremes.”
O’Brien disputed Allan’s characterisation of the event, saying the alliance was “highlighting the concerns that regional Victorians have”.
“It’s not unusual that that we would be attending a conference with people about concerns of what’s happening in regional Victoria under this Labor government,” O’Brien said.
Joyce, who is speaking at the conference’s opening dinner on Sunday night, said it was a “shame” Wilson was no longer attending.
“I’m really disappointed that it sounds like she’s been bullied out of it,” he said. “It’s One Nation, not some sort of neo-Nazi rally for God’s sake.
“This shows the conceit of politics that they say, ‘We’re broad minded people’. But you’re just not allowed to talk to certain people.”
He said One Nation’s recent polling surge meant the “dynamics had changed” and politicians had to “accept where the Australian people are”.
Weideman said the Across Victoria Alliance was “disappointed that Jess Wilson is unavailable because of an internal diary issue”. He said they were working to find a time to meet with Wilson “post our conference”.
“But the reality is we have invited the premier also to put her case and to this moment she has not responded,” Weideman said.
