Member for Murray Helen Dalton has resigned from the Shooters Fishers Party and will now represent Murray as an independent in NSW Parliament.

Ms Dalton said Upper House SFF Party MPs did not show up for a crucial vote on floodplain harvesting last week.

“They refused to vote down dodgy National Party law changes that allowed for excessive water take in the Northern Basin.

These law changes really disadvantaged Lower Darling communities and Murray River irrigators,” she said.

“I’ve always said I’d put my electorate ahead of my party. As an Independent I’ll be able to always vote in the interests of my community,” she said.

Ms Dalton said she had spoken to her party colleagues earlier in the day to let them know her intention to leave. She also informed NSW Parliament that she would remain on the crossbench as an independent.

“I won’t be joining or aligning with any other parties or MPs. Just before I resigned, the Shooters removed me as an administrator of my own Facebook page, then deleted it. I will need to create a new page to communicate with constituents,” she said.

“Over the next year, my focus will be on improving hospital and mental health services in rural NSW; achieving fairer water sharing arrangements across the state and addressing the rural teacher shortage and housing crisis.”

Ms Dalton welcomed the NSW Upper House vote to disallow law changes that allowed for excessive floodplain harvesting in the NSW Northern Basin on Thursday.

She described it as a big victory for communities in the Lower Darling and irrigators in the electorate.

“Just before Christmas last year, the National Party sneakily changed the law to allow for licensing floodplain harvesting – the practice of diverting rainwater into private dams before it reaches the river. The new laws allowed water take in the Northern Basin well in excess of legal limits and that means less water for communities in the Southern Basin.”

On Thursday, the Upper House voted 18-15 in favour of disallowing the law changes made last December.

Mrs Dalton said she was extremely disappointed with her now former Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (SFF) colleagues in the Upper House who abstained from Thursday’s vote.

“I’m not in the Upper House, so I couldn’t vote on this motion. If I could, I definitely would have voted for the disallowance. I was told the SFF would support the disallowance, so I was shocked to see them abstain and I will be taking this up with those MPs to seek an explanation.”

Mrs Dalton said it was now up to the NSW Government to consult with farmers in the Southern Basin, as well as the North, to devise new laws that don’t disadvantage one group over another.

The Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party announced just prior to the meeting that it would not cast a vote in the motion put forward by green Independent Justin Field that would disallow regulation for floodplain harvesting.

“This disallowance motion is a political game from a green Independent looking for relevance that undermines years of hard work by the SFF to see floodplain harvesting regulated,” said Mark Banasiak, SFF MLC and Deputy Chair of the Select Committee on Floodplain Harvesting.

“My colleagues and I have been working with the Minister to get this right since 2019. The SFF will not be dragged into a political game by Independents or Greens because they cannot produce good water policy.”

In a statement issued late last week the SFF party leader Robert Borsak MLC claimed that despite Mrs Dalton’s pointed and extensive campaigning on farmers rights and water equity in the Murray, her position was no longer tenable within the SFF party given the inconsistencies with her own farming and water trading activities.

“This includes the sale and water trading, albeit fully legal, to large companies that Mrs Dalton was criticising under the protection of Parliamentary privilege,” he said.

“It is untenable and goes against the principles of the party to use Parliamentary privilege to pursue your personal and commercial interests. Your constituency comes first, second and last in Parliament – nothing else,” he said.

“At the same time Mrs Dalton was rightly campaigning against large water traders across the State, the abuse of floodplain harvesting and a host of other issues – constituents close to her office and the party recognised the inconsistencies between what Helen was saying and doing.

“Under the guise of supporting farmers and southern irrigators, and unknowingly to the Party, Helen continued to make hidden deals with Justin Fields and the Greens party over the past three years for environmental water to flow further south into South Australia.

“This policy of appeasement and dealing with the extreme left, flies directly in the face of what SFF stands for and what we promised to do for the people of Murray.

“We wish Helen the best in her career in politics without the party. We invested a significant amount of resources and trust in winning the seat off the Nationals, so it is a shame it has ended this way.

“But the integrity of the party comes before any Member. We tried to reconcile this earlier and internally as you would expect, but Mrs Dalton refused to budge.

“It was a shame to see Helen investing more time outside of her electorate focusing on issues that had no impact on her constituents in Murray as a way to try and bolster her attempt at running Federally.

“I don’t think the electorate of Murray cares about internal political party squabbles – they want the representation, funding and policies they deserve from NSW Government. We will find them a viable candidate who can be their voice in Parliament.

“The SFF will continue to run a select committee into the water trading inquiry and will rerun the Water Register Bill and negotiate its carriage in the lower house with the government.

“We will be contesting the seat of Murray in the 2023 State Election with a different candidate. Pending some final vetting processes we’ve learnt the hard way, we will announce this candidate in due course.”

Electoral background of Mrs Dalton’s candidacy:

• Mrs Dalton unsuccessfully contested the seat in 2015, securing a primary vote of 18.2%.
• Following the resignation of Former Murray MP and Nationals Minister, Adrian Piccoli, Mrs Dalton approached and was accepted by the SFF Party to be its candidate in the hotly contested 2017 by-election. As an SFF candidate Mrs Dalton was narrowly de-feated, securing a primary vote of 31.5%.
• In 2019 NSW State Election, the SFF finally secured the seat with a primary vote of 38.75%, beating Nationals incumbent Austin Evans.

This article appeared in the Narrandera Argus, 10 March 2022.