The Liberal party’s campaign for the upcoming New South Wales local government elections is in crisis after it missed the deadline to nominate candidates for several councils.
The NSW Liberals were scrambling late on Wednesday afternoon to find out how many candidates had been affected by the administrative blunder, which meant the party would probably be missing candidates at the 14 September council elections.
The opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said submitting the nominations was a matter for the NSW Liberals secretariat and demanded the state director, Richard Shields, explain what had happened.
Speakman said he’d spoken to Shields “only very briefly” and would wait to hear his explanation before commenting on whether he should resign.
“My wish was to have Liberal-endorsed candidates in as many council elections as possible,” Speakman said.
“I think people are entitled to have the choice of voting for a Liberal candidate, if that’s what they wish to do.”
Speakman was expected to meet with the secretariat again later on Wednesday.
In a statement, Shields said he was waiting for more information from the NSW electoral commission before he could say which council candidates had had their paperwork submitted in time and would be eligible to run.
“The status of nominated Liberal candidates will be communicated upon confirmation,” he said.
“On behalf of the secretariat, I would like to apologise to Liberal endorsed councillors that were not nominated and to the party membership more broadly.”
Shields blamed resourcing issues within the secretariat, which shares responsibility for the party’s governance and administration in NSW and is in charge of submitting the paperwork to nominate council candidates.
“Unfortunately we were unable to nominate in all of the local government areas that were put forward by the state executive,” Shields said.
“Close to 300 Liberal candidates were nominated with the NSW electoral commission, including in areas like Parramatta, Strathfield, Blacktown, Inner West and Bayside where we did not run in 2021.”
Guardian Australia understands there are unlikely to be any Liberal candidates in the following councils: Northern Beaches, Lane Cove, Campbelltown, Camden, Blue Mountains, Wollongong and Shoalhaven.
It is likely only some of the Liberals who were nominated for the following councils will appear as candidates: Georges River, Canterbury-Bankstown, Maitland, North Sydney and Penrith.
A spokesperson for the electoral commission said on Wednesday afternoon it was still processing nominations and could not yet confirm who had or had not been nominated.
They said nominations would be published online as they were approved and a full list would available before 2pm on Thursday, which is when candidates will find out what spot they will occupy on the ballot papers.
