Voting to expel Malcolm Turnbull from the party has become somewhat of a tradition for NSW Liberals. This week they’re at it again, with conservatives in the Sutherland Shire planning to use a federal electoral conference meeting in Hughes to take a stand against the former prime minister.
The motion to expel, which Crikey understands will be brought by hard-right elements within the Shire branch, complains “little has come out of [Turnbull’s] mouth that has been positive to the party and its future” since he lost his prime ministership.
“In fact his comments have quite often been divisive with the intention to ‘white ant’ the future of the party and serve no purpose other than to try and make himself relevant again,” the motion reads.
The motion specifically calls out Turnbull’s comments to Channel 10’s The Project program in July where the ex-prime minister and prominent moderate said of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton: “I couldn’t think of anyone less suited to be Prime Minister of a multicultural society like Australia.”
Speaking of Dutton, another motion the Shire branch will bring to the meeting would have the party congratulate him for his “courage” to intervene in the state division following the local government election nomination “fiasco” earlier in the year.
The same motion would call on NSW party president Don Harwin to resign from that position.
Yet another motion calls for the expulsion of ex-NSW treasurer Matt Kean from the Liberal Party, arguing “the circumstances of [his] early resignation and departure from state Parliament” to lead the federal government’s Climate Change Authority would “have a serious negative impact” on the party at the next federal election.
Turnbull and Kean both declined to comment. Harwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s far from the first time Turnbull has faced this kind of action: NSW Liberals have sought to expel him in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022, without success.
So why try again? From what Crikey is told, the effort is meant to sow division in Hughes, where the moderate Jenny Ware was selected to be the party’s candidate in 2022 by a troika of party officials led by then-prime minister Scott Morrison. Her success at the election meant she was a shoo-in for the preselection for the next election as well.
The selection of candidates by party officials rather than allowing members to battle it out in preselection contests is a pet peeve of Liberal right-wingers.
“It’s an attempt at embarrassing Ware by people who are annoyed she was ‘captain’s picked’,” a Liberal source said.
Another source said the party welcomed disagreements on policy positions and that “at the end of the day, members are effectively advocating for the same thing: clean, reliable energy solutions”.
“There’s some disagreement on how to go about it, but this reflects the debate in the business sector, science community, and the broader community,” the source said.
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