Nick McBride, the Member for MacKillop in South Australia, today announced that he is departing the South Australian Liberal Party to sit as an independent.
Mr McBride informed the media that he had been forced to make supportive statements by his party on previous occasions.
The South East MP largely attributed his party exit to "dark forces" within the party and blamed party "factionalism" which created an unfavourable working environment.
Quotes from Mr McBride on another publication infer that McBride had clearly been put offside in recent weeks by fellow SA Liberal colleagues.
"I don't think they're going to get far and I think it's a great time for me to now exit," said Mr McBride.
"The Liberal membership is controlled by factionalism and the way it's described as 'dark' or 'factionalism' is that it's always on the quiet, always in the background, it's not in the day of light."
Flow FM contacted Liz Champion, Editor of the Naracoorte Herald (part of McBride's former electorate), for her reaction to today's announcement.
Champion said that it was her belief McBride had been wrestling with the decision to abandon his party potentially since before last year's 2022 State Election.
"I know just before the state election, Nick was actually forced to put out a release saying that he reaffirmed his support for the Liberal Party and that he always intended to run in the Liberal Party, then only five weeks ago, he was again forced to put out a statement saying he reaffirmed his loyalty to the party," Champion said.
"So, I mean, there's been lots and lots of, you know, rumours swirling that he had every intention to leave and he has been quite scathing about the election loss and, you know, decisions that were made within the party even before the election under the Marshall government."
Champion suggested the party's policies pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic may have also been at odds with McBride's stance on specific directions the party took. "He was quite critical of some of the, sort of, COVID decisions and things like that...so I don't think this is a huge surprise to anyone, I think a lot of people were sort of expecting this," Champion said.