Speaking with concerned residents in Guyra on Monday, Mr Shoebridge offered advice on pushing for independence. 

“This idea that you can’t have small councils because they’re inefficient is plain crap,” he said. “It’s false when you look at the financials, and false when you look at the politics.

“The costs of the amalgamations have been many times greater than what was proposed and as councils get bigger they tend to get less efficient because you have more bureaucracy.” 

The MP’s visit came just days after the Berejiklian Government abandoned its remaining 14 forced council amalgamations in Sydney.

“There’s a lot of passion still in Guyra about getting your council back,” Mr Shoebridge said.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Guyra … I came to talk to your council about 18 months ago.

“I was travelling around talking to regional councils saying ‘you have to start court proceedings because this government wants to do a job on you’ [and] they are doing it in a deeply undemocratic way.

“I think there’s a whole lot of legal flaws in what they’re doing.”

Mr Shoebridge said it was important to keep up the fight, with state elections coming up in March, 2019.

“The longer we fight, the longer you stay in it, the more chance you have in keeping your council,” he said.

“It will be very cheap to re-establish Guyra.”

Mr Shoebridge said the way of the future should be Guyra working in partnership with Armidale, but as a standalone council.

“Before the amalgamation Guyra and Armidale already cooperated on a lot of stuff like payroll and IT,” he said.

“You had the benefit of not having all the costs of a larger council but being in partnership without losing your political autonomy.”