MEMBER for Mildura Ali Cupper has vowed to “never open myself up again” to a formal coalition which could descend into “low blows” between political parties.
The independent MP called it quits on her alliance with influential Victorian upper house MP Fiona Patten late Thursday after Sunraysia Daily exposed how the Reason Party had created websites under the domain names of three Victorian Nationals MPs.
In a dramatic day of political fallout, Ms Cupper was caught up in the same “dirty tricks” tactic that she complained about when the Nats created a website under her domain name earlier this year.
Asked yesterday whether she now regretted forming the coalition with Reason, Ms Cupper said: “It was my optimistic expectation that we could have a partnership that wouldn’t be mired in party politics.
“But now I can see how easily that can happen. I’m never going to open myself up to that again.
“So all the collaboration I do from now is going to be informal.”
Ms Cupper and Ms Patten – who is in New Zealand this week – have spoken following the Mildura MP’s decision to end their formal partnership.
“Fiona and I have enormous respect for each other, and she understands why I have done this,” Ms Cupper said.
“She is a highly intelligent woman and a savvy, fearless politician. We will continue to work together on getting stuff done, including on the industrial hemp taskforce.”
Reason Party leader Fiona Patten thanked Ms Cupper for putting her in the picture about the challenges facing the state’s far north-west.
“I have very much enjoyed learning about Mildura and the issues that are being faced,” Ms Patten said.
“Ali is doing a tremendous job and I look forward to helping her progress her platform.”
Ms Patten said her party had “no intention of developing websites” under the names of the three Nats MPs.
“It was done in response to their criticism of Ali for not securing her website address,” Ms Patten said.
“Of course, we didn’t build denigrating sites in other people’s names like the Nats do and continue to do.”
As of 3pm yesterday, the websites created by Reason – peterwalsh.com.au, emmakealy.com.au and dannyobrien.com.au – were still landing on the Reason Party’s home page.
Alicupper.com was taken down by the Nats late Thursday.
“Now Cupper has split from the Reason Party, the website has served its purpose,” a Nats spokesman said yesterday.
