More than 100 people, many already signed up as volunteers, gathered at the Sherbourne Terrace Hotel in Shepparton on Monday night for what amounted to a campaign launch.
The plaudits started with the Welcome to Country, performed by fellow Greater Shepparton City councillor Greg James, who said the family of Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls, after whom the seat was named, had asked him to pass on their endorsement of Mr Priestly’s candidacy.
David McKenzie, a past chair of the Committee for Greater Shepparton, who has also worked with Mr Priestly on the GMID Water Leadership Forum and the Regional Resource Taskforce, said he had no doubt he was up to the task of representing the region in Canberra.
“Nearly everyone who meets Rob during the course of this campaign will vote for him,” he said.
Mr McKenzie highlighted the blocking of the Nationals’ attempt to move a motion in the House of Representatives on water buybacks and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan as a measure of why voters were disenfranchised by party politics.
“The really perverse thing about that is, it is National Party policy, no more buybacks,” he said.
“One thing we can be sure of with an independent is their motivation and their accountability, which is not to a party, but to the people who elected them.”
Mr Priestly told the gathering the campaign team had grown to more than 100 people, led by his brother and business partner Phil Priestly.
He said the quality of political discourse in federal politics at the moment was poor and the understanding of regional challenges and needs even poorer.
“We really want to win and we are going to set up a campaign that can achieve that,” he said.
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