Dalton says Murray needs full attention of its member

While Ms Dalton has four elections under her belt, Cr Betts has the full financial support and backing of the Nationals Party behind her.

Ms Dalton censured Cr Betts decision to stay on as both mayor and Member for Murray, if elected.

She said the Murray electorate was a big portfolio to take care of, with 10 councils, two health districts, extremely diverse agricultural industries and the rivers.

“I honestly think this role on its own is a full-time job,” Ms Dalton said.

“This electorate is the second biggest electorate in New South Wales. It's 110,000 sq kilometres. It's bigger than Scotland. This is not a walk in the park.

“She would be letting down her council because she can't possibly give it the full attention that it deserves and she'd be letting down the electorate because she can't possibly run both to a good standard.”

A mother of four, Ms Dalton attracted 53.54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote against Austin Evans in the 2019 election.

Elected as Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party member, she resigned from the party and became an Independent when the party did not back her support of a disallowance motion on the issue of flood plain harvesting.

The tension between Ms Dalton and the party came to a head when Robert Borsak said she should be “clocked” in parliament.

“That particular incident has caused the demise of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, because two Lower House members have now walked away because he wouldn't step down and they couldn't work with him,” she said.

“People I'd never met before were coming up to me saying they were so pleased I'd left. They’d say 'well, why did you join the party in the first place? You knew what this bloke was like,’ but, I didn’t.

“I dealt with Robert Brown, who was the other upper house member at the time. We were campaigning together and I got to know him really well.

“Then they shafted him and I had to deal with Robert Borsak. I don't dislike Robert Borsak, but he's from a bygone era. He's autocratic and I can't stand it.”

Frustrated the party wouldn’t consult her on rural or agricultural issues, Ms Dalton felt her knowledge was wasted.

“I’m from a farm, I was brought up on a farm, I’m a Nuffield scholar, I’m the go-to girl for environmental issues but because I’m a woman, I think it was like this is the way you will vote,” she said.

“And sorry but no, I won't.

“Because this is going to impact my electorate.”

Ms Dalton has five key pillars that she will prioritise if elected.

Healthcare, education, infrastructure (including roads, rail, bridges and digital connectivity), housing shortages and labour shortages.

High on her agenda is creating more affordable and social housing, making the process for developing housing easier on councils — without compromising safety or cutting corners, building stronger roads that are better able to withstand natural disasters and developing more proactive plans for natural disaster management.

But in recent months, she has also been thrown into the media spotlight for her stance on a sixth issue — gaming reform.

“I didn't have any intention of that becoming as big as it has, I just thought ‘yeah I'll support this reform in parliament’ and then next minute everyone's chasing me,” Ms Dalton said.

“I want the advertising of gaming banned. I'm not asking for a ban on pokies machines but I am on advertising, and in terms of the machines I'm just asking for moderation because we've got more poker machines here than we do potholes in the road.

“This issue has been capturing my time when I've got health, water and all these other things that I want to talk about, and yet my days filled with gambling at the moment.”

Ms Dalton said healthcare in the region had been “systematically run down” on top of the fact “Medicare is on its knees” — a diabolical combination, which she said had resulted in dire consequences.

Wanting to inform city MPs about healthcare in the region, she initiated the Rural Health Inquiry, which had more than 700 submissions.

She has persistently rejected the Nationals Party policies of centralising hospitals, but has instead called for more hospitals and more mental health units within those hospitals.

“People are having babies on the side of the roads or at the police station. It's terrible,” Ms Dalton said.

“Mental health is a massive, massive problem in this electorate. It's settled down a bit lately but suicide was a big issue here

“People don't know what's out there, there's all these private healthcare practices and people don't even know what they do. When you're sick, sometimes all you need is to just to go the hospital and see a dedicated mental health unit, where they are assessed and directed where to go based on their specific needs.”

Ms Dalton said she would like to see the more incentives being introduced for healthcare workers, a stronger relationship between healthcare providers and universities, and compulsory placements in regional New South Wales for healthcare students to undertake.

“I would like to see it being made easier for overseas doctors to come over to our regional communities,” she said.

“At the moment, they've got to jump through hoops and it costs a lot of money. Get them out into our community and make them do five years here. Then hopefully they will put their roots down, have their children and stay.

“Whoever is going to be named health minister, I'll be knocking on their door first thing.”

Ms Dalton will continue to campaign on all issues relating to the environment and agriculture, particularly water rights.

She said she would love to see the NSW Government being “booted out” of making decisions on the environment because “locals know more” about it.

“Water is a massive issue for us and we need to ensure our communities don't take another cut in productive ability and that our communities are sustainable,” she said.

“The thing is that people in metro areas don't often understand is that most farmers are environmentalists because we have to be if we want good outcomes. If you've got an environment on your farm, which is suffering, so will your product and your production.

“What the government does is pit the environment against Ag production so it looks like they're at loggerheads. We need to be working together, let's not pit one against the other.”

Ms Dalton said she was not pleased with the way state and federal governments dealt with downstream communities in preparation for the flood.

She reached out on a number of occasions to ask for assistance with preparations.

“We wanted to be proactive but we kept getting passed back and forth between state and federal government when we should have been dealt with by both,” she said.

“I was asking the Emergency Services Minister if there was any money for preparations and what else we could do and the answer was always ‘oh we'll just do the assessment when you get flooded.’

“We don't want to get flooded. We don’t want to be punished. We don’t want to be reactionary. We want to sort it out now.

“I'm just absolutely disappointed in the in the way it was handled.”

During the process of flood recovery, Ms Dalton said it quickly became evident to her that there was a slow roll-out of recovery money in NSW when compared to Victoria.

Ms Dalton said she has brought about significant positive change in the community.

“Before I was elected, the average amount of money allocated here in the budget was $50 million,” she said.

“Since I was elected it's now $363 million. That’s more than seven times the amount than before I was elected.

“So can an independent make a difference? Oh, I think so. This is a marginal seat now.”