NO-ONE should be surprised that the new Member for Orange-in-waiting reacted badly to his first does of taunting in state parliament, but that does not mean Phil Donato has no case to answer.
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Nationals MP Adrian Piccoli used Question Time on Thursday to fire the first [figurative] shots at the man who looks set to become the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party’s first Lower House MP.
In extraordinary scenes, Mr Piccoli began yelling “Bang, bang, bang!” while pointing at Labor MPs, referring to Labor’s support for the SFF at last Saturday’s Orange byelection.
“You don’t get out of it that easily!” he yelled. “That’s the Shooters party!”
He went on to say Labor had “delivered” the first SFF candidate to the state parliament and claimed the SFF was more interested in getting rid of Australia’s tough guns laws than educating our children.
Mr Donato hit back on Friday, accusing Mr Piccoli of “a disgraceful course of conduct with deliberate lies, deliberate mistruths”, but he can expect the scrutiny to only increase if he falls across the line on Monday, as expected.
Mr Donato’s professional career has been as a police prosecutor, charged with locking up the state’s criminals – including those in breach of gun laws.
It’s quite a leap to go from that to representing a party that has as one of its central tenets a desire to repeal the 1996 National Firearms Agreement and to “vehemently oppose” a national firearms register.
Perhaps Mr Donato is the first police prosecutor to believe what this state really needs is more guns in the community and joining the SFF was his best chance to bring about that change.
More likely, though, is the suggestion that joining the SFF was an opportunistic move to capitalise on the collapse in support for the Nationals from traditional voters – particularly farmers.
Voting Labor last Saturday may have been a bridge too far for many rusted-on Nationals voters who wanted to lodge a protest while voting for the SFF may have been more palatable.
But Mr Donato – and those who voted for him – cannot claim to support the SFF’s fishing and farming policies while ignoring the party’s position on gun control. It’s the SFF, not FF.
Adrian Piccoli is the first to turn up the heat on the SFF’s more extreme policy positions but he won’t be the last.