Barwon MP Roy Butler says stepping down from Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party the right thing to do

Mr Butler is one of two state MPs who made the decision to step down from the Shooters after a failed bid to take over party leadership during an annual general meeting on Saturday.

Member for Orange Philip Donato also left the party.

"I didn't want to do it, I tried very hard to keep the party in one piece," Mr Butler told the Daily Liberal.

"If I hadn't stepped away from the party there would have been question marks about my integrity. I didn't want to go into 2023 with people saying 'Roy said it wasn't tenable if nothing changed' and he stayed there.

"Both myself and Philip Donato are men of principle and integrity, and this demonstrates just that."

The attempt to oust party leader Robert Borsak comes after misogynistic comments he made in parliament about independent MP Helen Dalton - a former member of the SFF who quit the party in March.

Mr Butler, Mr Donato and MLC Mark Banasiak all urged Mr Borsak to step down following the remarks.

"This is something that's been accumulating for a while, over the past three or four years there's been several times I've given feedback to Robert," Mr Butler said.

"But the comments in the legislative council where he suggested someone should have 'clocked' Helen Dalton were the catalyst for us to sit and have a meeting with him on the 8th of November.

"In that meeting we asked him to resign and he obviously didn't agree with our assessment."

Adding to Mr Butler's decision to leave the party was the executive being "unfairly stacked" in Mr Borsak's favour. Mr Butler said the executive is currently made up of Mr Borsak himself, his son and two of his close friends.

"After he refused to step down we thought we'd try and change it through the AGM. We wanted to take his son off the executive and one of his good friends off and put some people there who aren't aligned with him," Mr Butler explained.

"That wasn't successful either. We already said it was untenable without change and there was no change in the executive and no change in what Robert was doing - and he's not retracted or apologised for his comment.

"The female voters in our electorate wouldn't be very happy if we just let that go. And we thought we could send a pretty clear message that we don't support that by stepping away from the SFF."

Mr Butler concedes stepping away from the party could lose some of the party loyalists as he goes into the next state election, he said his record as an MP for Barwon speaks for itself.

"There will be a core group of voters who will support SFF if they have a candidate," he said.

"But I look at the broader electorate - which is made up of a lot of people who aren't necessarily into shooting or fishing or farming - and I think I can stand by our record over the past four years.

"I'm never confident with things like this because you never know what will happen. But I can be confident in the work we've done and what we've achieved."

As an independent, Mr Butler said he will continue to stand up for the core constituency of the SFF; "law-abiding firearms owners, people who are fishos and people who are in regional communities and in agriculture".

"They're still very much dear to my heart and something I will continue to advocate for. But our approach in parliament has always been a bit like being independent in that we pick up an issue and we're going to do something about that," said Mr Butler.

"And we've had an incredible run over the last four years in terms of the amount of funding we've been able to bring into the electorates of Orange and Barwon."

"We've got great credibility with just about everyone in the parliament which means we can make a phone call or send a text message and they know we're not trying to catch them out or cause them grief if we raise an issue."

Mr Butler said he will continue his work advocating for his electorate in the coming months and will continue to make himself available to the community should they have any concerns.

"For me not much will change, my offices will stay in the same spot, my numbers will stay the same, my email address will stay the same," he said.

"We'll change some stationary and some business cards but it doesn't change the work we do or how hard we work."

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