ON Budget night, pretend independent Tony Windsor bragged about all the pork Wayne Swan had delivered to his electorate.
He issued releases detailing more than $80 million of cash for New England from a government that has sent the country broke with wasteful spending. As if $250,000 for airconditioners for a regional art museum or $80,000 for a community “shed” in Werris Creek or $20,000 for the Gunnedah Shire Band to travel to France is a fair distribution of taxpayer cash. What a joke.
You’d think voters would not be swayed by the largesse. Voters I talk to are quietly furious Windsor betrayed his conservative electorate by siding with Labor in 2010 and supporting the government through every scandal and bungle under the pretext of “stability”. They can’t wait to boot him out. But inexplicably, he still has his fans. And he is nothing if not wily.
He has scored a scalp with the shock resignation of Nationals candidate Richard Torbay over alleged links to former NSW Labor MP Eddie Obeid.
Now Barnaby Joyce is risking his career to contest the seat and the temperature is rising. Joyce used parliamentary privilege last week to question the $4.625 million sale of Mr Windsor’s farm to Werris Creek Coal, and he and Windsor almost came to blows in the corridor afterwards.
Windsor claims Joyce is courting the vote of “rednecks”, “people that fear easy”, “the knitting-needle brigade” and “people that would have to be fed grog for a week”.
