The Indi MP's comment follows Ms Ley telling electors that voting for an independent would help Labor leader Bill Shorten become prime minister.

Ms Ley made the claim on Friday after Albury mayor Kevin Mack announced his bid for Farrer as an independent and repeated it yesterday in a radio interview with ABC Goulburn Murray.

"It's a vote for a Labor prime minister, that's my point," she said when asked if she was misleading voters.

"Yes independents do make their own decisions but if you look at their voting record in the parliament many of those decisions have gone against the government and many of those decisions I would say have not counted for much over the years.

"In the years I've been in parliament many independents have not had the balance of power, hardly been acknowledged in the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate and privately actually have said to me 'mmm sometimes I wonder what I was able to achieve for my community'."

Ms McGowan said she and the other independent MPs she knows would never make such a comment.

"There's a litany of good things that have come to North East Victoria because we've had an independent, so I don't know who she would be talking about," Ms McGowan said.

She pointed to data showing she had supported the passage of government bills 92 per cent of the time, compared to Labor's 86 per cent.  

"In 2016 that was the line the Liberal Party ran, the Liberal Party had posters all around the electorate saying 'a vote for Cathy is a vote for Labor'," she said.

"Clearly the data is not there, so I would be asking Sussan to justify what she's saying.

"I'd ask her to be careful.

"People need to be careful about their rhetoric.

"In the last election the prime minister of the time, Malcolm Turnbull, was very upset I think at the rhetoric the Labor Party used against the Liberal Party in terms of Mediscare.

"No-one likes it in the community, people expect their politicians to be accurate, reliable and trustworthy, particularly in an election campaign."

On election night in 2016, Ms Ley slammed Labor's actions on Medicare as  "a disgraceful scare campaign" with a text purportedly sent from Medicare to voters described as "deceitful at best and..fraudulent misrepresentation at worst".