MEMBER for Riverina Michael McCormack has broken ranks with the Coalition party room and moved against the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in parliament.
A disallowance motion has also been moved in the Senate by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.Mr McCormack filed a disallowance motion against the Plan late on Monday night, which was seconded by fellow Coalition MP Sharman Stone, the member for Murray.
Mr McCormack concedes his decision is unlikely to win him any new friends in the party room, but he was unable to stand by and watch a bad plan rip the heart out of Riverina communities.
"When you go against your party's wishes, you are some sort of pariah," he said.
"The objections I might get here in Canberra I can live with, but I cannot in all honesty look an irrigation farmer in the eye and say, 'I did my best but we're going to have to live with it'," he said.
It appears the motion has little chance of succeeding, with the rest of the Coalition believed to be prepared to support the plan's passage through parliament with a view to amending the plan should it win government at next year's federal election.
"If it ends up with Sharman Stone and I on one side of the parliament, the Speaker (Anna Burke) in the chair and 147 members on the other side, so be it," he said.It's a reality not lost on Mr McCormack.
"At least the people in our electorates will know we voted on the right side and stood up for their best interests."
No comments:
Post a Comment