An internal Liberal review of the party’s NSW division could end up being a pretext for a federal takeover, sources have told Crikey.
At the weekend, the party’s federal executive ordered an inquiry into the state division, to be headed by Brian Loughnane, a former federal Liberal director and the husband of ex-Tony Abbott chief of staff and Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin.
“The review will be a pretext for Canberra to argue the federal campaign in NSW should be separated from the state secretariat,” one source with insight into the party’s internal affairs said.
Some inside the party have speculated the federal campaign for seats in NSW could be run out of temporary headquarters in Western Sydney, likely Parramatta. Operating campaign headquarters in battleground states is a common tactic in federal elections — for example, the Liberal campaigns in 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004 were all run out of Melbourne.
“[Opposition Leader Peter] Dutton will have the final say — the feds are obviously concerned the NSW division won’t be able to deliver in the lead-up to the federal election,” another source said.
Liberal Party rules say the risk of mismanagement, reputational damage or significant threats to the party’s electoral prospects could be reasons for a federal intervention into a state division.
According to The Daily Telegraph, Loughnane will deliver his report by September 2, and a meeting of the federal executive has been scheduled for the following day.
The developments come after the Liberal Party last week failed to nominate up to 140 council hopefuls ahead of local government elections scheduled for September 14, in what one Liberal dubbed an “absolute disaster” for the party.
Despite an admission from NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman that the “party administration [had] let the candidates, the party members, and the general public down” as a result of a failure to undertake “basic administrative process”, the Liberals are now hoping to pin the blame on the NSW Electoral Commission.
In a statement circulated on Sunday, a Liberal spokesperson said the commission had made an “error” and “did not comply with the timeframe to provide formal notice under its own regulation before closing nominations”.
The statement argued the commission published a notice five days before the close of nominations, rather than the required seven days.
The party was preparing to launch a legal bid to have the nomination deadline extended, according to the statement.
“It’s very much a ‘dog ate my homework’ case and I doubt it’ll get much sympathy in the Supreme Court,” Marque Lawyers managing partner and Crikey contributor Michael Bradley said.
Bradley said that while the commission was required to publish notice of the election on its website at least one week before the nomination deadline, the election manager had the discretion to make the deadline another date.
“It doesn’t follow from the error that anyone has a right to any remedy,” he said. “They’d have to show as a minimum that they suffered some actual prejudice, not hypothetical, because of it, which they can’t do because of course they knew what the deadline was and they simply failed to meet it.”
A spokesperson for Dutton declined to comment.
