Nationals’ Senator for Queensland, Senator Barnaby Joyce, was at the last day of the Plebiscites Inquiry in Cairns yesterday, having also attended hearings on Thursday and Friday of last week in Noosa and Emerald respectively.

“Getting to the core of this issue is quite straight forward; this is a political decision brought about by the Labor Party in Queensland. Put enough pressure on Labor at the federal election and they will change their decision.

“In an organisation where you are expelled if you cross the floor, their current position is a top down contrived position to mitigate the fallout of the arbitrary nastiness of forced council amalgamations.

“It beggars belief how from the same party, from the same state, all the six federal members: Mr Rudd, Mr Bevis, Dr Emerson, Ms Livermore, Mr Swan and Mr Ripoll, have a completely different position to the 59 state members who are in the same party from the same state.

“Now the Shadow Minister for Local Government, Senator Lundy, wants to have forums of Local Government twice a year and also wants constitutional recognition to ‘give them a fighting chance’, as reported in the Cairns Post today.

“Very noble but doesn’t match the reality of where Labor is.

“Her efforts may be better directed, at the moment, to her Labor party colleagues in Queensland otherwise there won’t be much to fight for.

“The Labor Party overwhelmingly, in Queensland, wants council amalgamations so let’s cease this ridiculous little pas de deux where there’s feigned concern about amalgamations which 59 out 65 of the Labor party elected members support.

“Whilst participating in the inquiry in Queensland yesterday Senator Lundy, to the best of my knowledge, didn’t even turn up. It would seem peculiar for a Senator who is Shadow Minister for Local Government to go to Cairns but not turn up to the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Democratic Plebiscites) Bill Senate Inquiry, an inquiry intrinsically involved with Local government.

“It might be very sneaky and very clever but it’s not very honest.

“I’ll put London to a brick that if the Labor Party believed Council amalgamations would affect them federally they would change their position immediately.

“Unfortunately, this is ugly raw politics because this problem is caused by an ugly, purely political decision.

“So it’s ‘us and them politics’ and Mr Rudd, Mr Bevis, Dr Emerson, Ms Livermore, Mr Swan and Mr Ripoll want to be us while the rest of the Labor Party want to be them and we're supposed to believe this.” Senator Joyce said.