This was independent candidate for New England Tony Windsor’s warning to the Coalition ahead of next week’s election, which he believes could see a real chance of a hung parliament back in the lower house.

Speaking in response to member for New England Barnaby Joyce’s National Press Club address on Wednesday, in which the Deputy Prime Minister labelled Mr Windsor and former member for Lyne turned independent candidate for Cowper, Rob Oakeshott, as the “the front page of the Glee Club” and stated a parliament full of independents would be “the end of Australia”.

“The band is back together, offering us the same chaos that was brought to us at the last concert,” he said about Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott citing the mining tax and price on carbon. 

“Let’s envisage a [Parliament] with 150 independents. What we [would] have is total and utter chaos. That’s the end of Australia. The Commonwealth will collapse,” he said.

Responding to his comments, Mr Windsor said with no majority in the senate an inevitable reality following the election, the same could happen in the house of representatives.

“One of the options coming up is a hung parliament,” he said.

“And I’d suggest it would probably be best for Mr Joyce not to start throwing his weight around too much – that’s just coming from a gleeful person.

“I think that people have to remember too, that just because the government member makes a commitment, or what we’ve seen in terms of these promises (in the New England electorate) that they’re not worth the paper they’re written on.

“We all know that no one will have a majority in the Senate after this election. So everything on the table has to go to two houses, including budget measures.

“Independents are going to hold the balance of power in the Senate, that is almost a fact.

“Independents in the lower house and the Senate work with each other and talk with each other.

“We’ve done it before in terms of regional issues when it was in the Senate.

“So to insult all the independents, whether they’re in the senate or the house of representatives, not only insults the community who elects those people, it also insults the process.”