MEMBER for Orange and Nationals candidate for Calare Andrew Gee has defended his stance against forced amalgamations after Calare’s Labor candidate accused him of failing to vote against mergers in Parliament.
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Jess Jennings outlined five examples where Mr Gee either voted with the Coalition or absented himself from votes rather than crossing the floor.
On May 14 last year, Greens MP Jenny Leong moved to oppose forced mergers as a “flawed and counter-productive vehicle” for local government reform and acknowledging community opposition, which Mr Gee voted against.
Then on October 21, Labor MP Ron Hoenig moved for the government to acknowledge councils would be forced to merge and Mr Gee voted against debating it twice.
On February 16, March 9 and May 11, Mr Hoenig and fellow Labor MPs Jenny Aitcheson and Ryan Park respectively moved to debate various motions opposing forced mergers, including a requirement for the government to release the KPMG report, but Mr Gee was absent from Parliament for two of them and voted against the third.
Dr Jennings said the voting record contradicted everything he had heard Mr Gee say about council amalgamations within the electorate.
“The power has been in his hands - if he had have crossed the floor on any one of those motions there would have been a serious issue in the Liberal-National coalition,” he said.
“It would have caused so much disruption and any of those opportunities would have had an impact on whether amalgamations went ahead.”
In a statement to Fairfax Media, Mr Gee said he had never voted in favour of amalgamations and was proud of his voting record.
“No legislation on amalgamations has ever come before the NSW Parliament and there has never been a vote on it - it’s gone straight from the cabinet room to the governor’s office,” he said.
“The motions that Mr Jennings refers to are merely procedural motions that get flung around the Parliament every day of the week.
“Mr Jennings clearly has a few issues when it comes to reading transcripts because if he did read them properly he would see that the motions he speaks of were simply either debates about what to debate, were not actually voted on, weren’t about Cabonne, or were votes I abstained from.”
Amalgamation No Thank You (ANTY) spokeswoman Marj Bollinger said allowing forced mergers to be debated seemed to be a better option.
“But we have to trust him [Mr Gee] on what he believes to be the best, and I do believe he tried his best for us,” she said.
Concerning Ms Leong’s motion, Mrs Bollinger said the vote occurred before ANTY started meeting and before Mr Gee had pledged his support.
danielle.cetinski@fairfaxmedia.com.au
