NSW Labor has lost a dramatic late-hour vote to reform the state’s workers’ compensation scheme, after one of the key independents flipped their vote, declaring: “I will not be the patsy for this government.”

After taking carriage of introducing a series of government-sponsored amendments aimed at breaking state parliament’s month-long deadlock over workers’ compensation , independent MP Taylor Martin said in a speech at 8pm on Thursday he would not work on their behalf.

“If taking away workers’ protections and compensation matters so much to the Minns government’s budget, then one of its members in the lower house who signed the bloody pledge can move to rip off those workers and set the bar so high that they will no longer have any cover. I will not be the patsy for this government,”

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