Debra O'Brien said she was angered by the branch stacking scandal that has rocked the Labor Party this week.
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Ms O'Brien is the deputy president of the Armidale branch of the party and has stood as a candidate in Northern Tablelands at the last two state elections.
"There will always be opportunists and power freaks will join parties to throw their weight around. There's always an opportunity for corruption there and that's why you can get those sort of people attracted to politics," Ms O'Brien said.
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"(But) I don't think it should overshadow the, mostly, community-minded people who join our party and other parties."
The current scandal erupted last weekend when 60 Minutes broadcast allegations that saw Victorian MP and powerbroker Adem Somyurek sacked from the party.
Among the program's accusations of forgery of party membership forms and verbal attacks on colleagues.
Victoria's corruption watchdog has launched an investigation into allegations of "industrial-scale" branch stacking.
"I'm happy, and the Labor Party here is happy, that the premier has acted swiftly. And we're happy that our federal leader (Anthony) Albanese has condemned the people involved," Ms O'Brien said.
Ms O'Brien said she believed there would be party branch officials in Victoria who would have known large numbers of members had been signed up, without them being involved in the party.
"If you're at the branch meetings, those that are secretary and treasurer and people like that should be noticing who's signing the membership book, because you have to sign the book every meeting," she said.
"There would have to be people in the branch, certainly the secretary and those on the executive, who would know.
"I imagine it would be difficult to hide that, I think. I don't know if there's a sneaky way of hiding it, and people just don't know that there's supposed to be a lot of members.
"But I just don't know how you would hide it."
Meanwhile, Ms O'Brien said what angered her the most was the effect the scandal had on good people who were in the party and in politics for the right reasons.
"Decent people wouldn't do it. If you saw someone in your branch doing that you should dob them in," she said.
