Labor Ready for Race
JOEL Fitzgibbon, Federal Member of Parliament for the seat of Hunter said he was not surprised by the news that Barnaby Joyce is ineligible for Parliament and Labor is ready for the race for the seat of New England.
“It’s not surprising news, but it is good news,” said Mr Fitzgibbon MP.
“He should never have continued to have sat in Parliament, it was just outrageous,” he said.
“There is no way that either Malcolm Turnbull or Barnaby Joyce believe he could survive the High Court process therefore he should never have remained in Cabinet and exercised his vote, he has done that illegitimately and now a number of decisions he has made in that period could now be challenged.
“We do know that they haven’t envoked that gas trigger and we believe they didn’t because he was also in the end the Minister for Resources, the Minister responsible and they were concerned about that being challenged.
“We are looking forward to the campaign in New England because we do believe the National Party has taken these areas for granted and we’ll be campaigning hard on the NBN which is of course a debarcle in Tamworth and townships around and we’ll be reminding people of what a great NBN system the people of Armidale have because they have Labor’s NBN to the premises.
“Projects like the Scone bypass we funded in the 2012 budget and that’s now in its fifth year and not a sod has been turned, we’ll be highlighting that,” he said.
“We’ll be highlighting that all of these tough decisions they made in the 2014 budget, cuts to health, cuts to education and it hit people hardest in the regions, so we’ve got lots to be campaigning on,” Joel Fitzgibbon MP said.
Labor are yet to announce their candidate for the seat of New England.
The office Mr Joyce was unavailable for comment at this stage.
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