The right-wing rump of the Liberal Party, backed by the Murdoch press, is liking what it sees in NSW — the chance to take over a division characterised by sensible, centrist liberalism, and purge the influence of moderates.
The occasion, of course, is the truly spectacular bungle by the party’s head office to do basic paperwork to nominate Liberal candidates for local council elections, a bungle now being investigated by former Howard and Abbott-era federal director Brian Loughnane.
Since the shifting of planning powers from councils to planning panels, local government in Sydney has become even more an example of Wilde’s unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable than it used to be, but is still plagued by corruption and cronyism. Of course, that a large number of Sydney councils should be towed out to sea and sunk to make nice artificial reefs doesn’t alter how bad the bungle was — especially after state president and former minister Don Harwin declared that the party would be taking legal action against the NSW Electoral Commission — presumably for daring to have deadlines for things like elections — only to back down after, erm, getting legal advice.
Nice work, Don. Don’t give up your day job. Oh… wait.
This lurching from the incompetent to the shambolic has right-wingers correctly sharpening their knives for Harwin: Tony Abbott — whose political genius extends to winning the prime ministership in a landslide, getting sacked by his own MPs after less than two years, and losing his own once-safe seat — has demanded Harwin follow state director Richard Shields out the door, and wants a federal takeover of the NSW division. News Corp is right behind him, with veteran Coalition loyalist Dennis Shanahan also demanding a federal takeover, failing tabloid The Daily Telegraph calling for Harwin’s head, and The Australian rushing to defend Shields.
The narrative from the right — Peta Credlin has pushed it — is that the NSW division has been a basket case that cost Tony Abbott victory in 2010 (when the only thing that got Abbott close enough to contemplate offering his “arse” for the prime ministership was Kevin Rudd’s demolition job on the Gillard campaign) and helped cause the defeat of Scott Morrison in 2022. “We already know the review of the 2022 election found that the NSW branch ‘was not in an acceptable position to contest the election in some seats’,” Shanahan offered in The Australian, going on to quote extensively from the 2022 election review by Loughnane and Jane Hume (another political genius) on the shortcomings of the NSW branch.
Curiously absent from Shanahan’s account is any mention of the role played by Morrison himself and his apparatchik Alex Hawke in the pre-2022 preselection disaster in NSW. In addition to interfering in preselections in NSW — leading to Concetta Fierravanti-Wells savaging Morrison and accusing him of corrupting the NSW division — Morrison famously installed the disastrous Katherine Deves in Warringah in an effort to transform the 2022 election into an anti-trans culture war. But based on Shanahan’s account, you could be forgiven for thinking Morrison floated above the NSW division like some sort of benign deity in the run-up to 2022.
It’s not merely that Shanahan and News Corp are rewriting history. It’s that Deves — who was backed in multiple op-eds by The Australian and lauded by Abbott — is exactly the kind of candidate the right of the party wants to see, someone fresh from the trenches of the culture wars, ready to fight the good fight in conflicts over social issues imported directly from the US.
In fact if you want to see what Abbott and his coterie, and News Corp, would like to transform the NSW division into, just look over the border at the Victorian Liberals, a party loaded with right-wing religious zealots and culture warriors who are happier savaging and suing moderate colleagues than appealing to the Victorian electorate.
The Victorian Liberals are thus utterly unelectable. And the result is that Victoria has ended up with the highest-taxing, least competent and most corrupt government in the country. That’s what veering sharply to the right does in Australian electorates — removes the pressure of accountability and electoral competition from bad governments.
To do the same in NSW would be a crime. The Minns government has already proven itself to be barely competent, its few worthwhile policies — the quality of its deficit spending is much better than its Queensland counterpart — outweighed by the venality of its obeisance to the gambling and fossil fuel industries. Despite Mark Speakman failing to set the world on fire, and bitter stoushes with the Nats, the Coalition is within striking distance of making Minns a one-termer. A right-wing takeover would satisfy the thirst for revenge of right-wingers like Abbott against decades of defeats at the hands of moderates — and send NSW careening down the path of Victoria. Voters deserve much, much better.
What would a federal takeover of the NSW Liberals mean for the party, and the state? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
