Last week, parliament was recalled for sittings to take place today and tomorrow to debate the Bill. The Bill is expected to be introduced at tomorrow’s session.

Nationals MLC Trevor Khan said he believed the move was due to rumours up to 12 Labor Legislative Assembly members were prepared to cross the floor over the Bill.

“Potentially, what (Premier Morris) Iemma would be confronted with at that stage is a demonstration the party is in revolt on both sides of the caucus,” Mr Khan said.

“To that extent, it minimises the damage by presenting the Bill in the Upper House.”

He said if the Bill was defeated by a large number of Labor members crossing the floor, Mr Iemma would then have to assure Governor Marie Bashir he still had the house’s confidence.

“It would be a very serious step to be defeated on a piece of legislation like this in the Lower House.”

He said while it was common for bills to be introduced into the Upper House, the difference in this situation was parliament was recalled on the basis it was going to the Legislative Assembly.

But on Tuesday night it was revealed it was going upstairs.

He said the Nationals’ position on the privatisation issue would be known by this morning, before parliament sits.

“This is very serious for the people of NSW and all of us in the Nationals are treating it extraordinarily seriously.

“We’ll make our position plain after we’ve gone through our democratic processes of meeting and seriously discussing the issues. We will make the hard decisions that are necessary.”

Independent Tamworth MP Peter Draper said he believed the urgent recall of parliament was an abuse of the system.

In the five years he’s been in parliament, the only time it’s been recalled was during the Cronulla riots in 2005 when police were given emergency powers to prevent outbreaks of violence.