Barnaby Joyce has been called in to quell a revolt in a north-west New South Wales branch of the National party over the planned route of Australian Rail Track Corporation’s multi-billion-dollar inland rail project.
In an extraordinary move, the National party’s Narrabri branch voted last month to withdraw support for the government’s preferred route after hearing from long-term local irrigation and hydrology expert Jim Purcell.
A motion calling for an alternative route to be investigated was passed at a meeting on 15 February, with no one voting against and one abstention.
The branch is in National party heartland, Nationals MP Mark Coulton’s north-west NSW electorate of Parkes.
The planned inland rail route has been highly contentious in the Narrabri community, including its council floodplain committee raising serious concerns about the potential for flood risk.
The chair of the National party’s Narrabri branch, Jocellin Jansson, was unable to attend the 15 February meeting.
In an email seen by Guardian Australia, Jansson altered the time of the next branch meeting due on 15 March to accommodate the deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce’s travel commitments.
Joyce is scheduled to attend along with inland rail representatives and Coulton.
On 1 March, Jansson sent the email to branch members announcing the meeting would be for members only.
She said in the email: “At the last branch meeting members heard from Jim Purcell and his perspective of the inland rail alignment in and around Narrabri.”
According to Jansson, the purpose of the meeting on 15 March would be “to ensure members have the opportunity to hear from inland rail themselves and the minister for infrastructure about the project”.
Joyce told the ABC on Friday that he would be meeting with National party members in Narrabri.
He said that because the inland rail gives regional Australia its greatest opportunity for economic development “we want to make sure that it happens and it happens as quickly as possible”.
“You hear people out but every time you make a change, you create a delay, and sometimes the delay is years, and every time you make a change then other people have a right to say ‘well considering you’re considering that change, why don’t you consider our change?’,” he said.
The latest opposition comes after Narrabri’s mayor and general manger overturned council’s opposition to the proposed inland rail route in July 2021.
At the time, the mayor, Ron Campbell, said in a statement: “We recognised the futility of moving the line after a number of meetings in Sydney with inland rail and again meetings in Canberra with the federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications.”
Joyce had previously written to a concerned resident of Narrabri saying that consideration of an alternative route would take too long.
“I am advised that this process would take a minimum of two years, delaying the construction and connection of this section of inland rail with the already completed [Parkes to Narrabri] and the partially completed [Narrabri to Northstar] sections,” he said.
The NSW National party constitution states: “A substantive motion that has become a resolution of the meeting may be rescinded only by a motion on notice decided at a subsequent meeting.”
This makes it possible for the 15 February motion be withdrawn at the scheduled Narrabri National party branch meeting on 15 March, and a new motion supporting the proposed route substituted.
The chair of the NSW farmers inland rail taskforce, Adrian Lyons, said a local Nationals branch voting against the inland rail route in this fashion is a first.
Lyons said it’s “unique that the Nationals local branch called out the politics on this. They want to be listened to.”
He said NSW farmers want the route that is “the safest, with the most economic advantages for our community”.
“At this point they’ve ignored the calls from all of NSW, particularly the three greenfield sections.”
Purcell said that Narrabri is worth a further two years of route realignment planning to get it right.
“We’ve survived until 2022 without inland rail,” he said. “What’s the panic?”
Jansson did not respond to Guardian Australia’s detailed list of questions about the meetings on 15 February and 15 March, but she said “the vast majority of our branch members” did not attend the Narrabri Nationals branch meeting on 15 February.
