Liberals and Nationals will face off in a NSW state byelection sometime in the next few months. It could become a dirty campaign with federal implications as the Nationals gear up to try to “smash the Liberals into the ground”.
There are two reasons both state and federal Coalition members are closely watching the future race in the coastal state seat of Port Macquarie.
First, it’s fairly unusual for two Coalition partners to challenge each other, and the struggle for the seat risks reviving an ongoing grudge between Nationals and Liberals in the area. Second, those in the federal Nationals camp worry the byelection could clash with the upcoming federal election, tiring out voters.
Last weekend, both the state Liberals and Nationals announced they would be fielding candidates in Port Macquarie. The allies typically avoid running against each other, but this seat is a bit of a special case.
Leslie Williams — the Port Macquarie MP who announced her retirement last week — was elected there as a National in 2011 but defected to the Liberals in 2020 after a falling out with then Nationals leader John Barilaro. (As Crikey revealed in 2023, the conflict with Barilaro became so bitter he threatened to sue her for defamation, before Williams wrote a letter of apology that temporarily eased tensions between the two.)
The way the Nationals see it, Port Macquarie is a Nationals seat and Williams’ defection did nothing to change that. People watching the upcoming race should expect the gloves to come off.
“We would prefer not to go to a potential three-cornered contest, and ultimately we will have to pull resources from our seats federally to contest what should have been a reasonable, negotiated outcome [with the Liberals] … but we can’t wait to smash them into the ground,” a state Nationals source said.
NSW Nationals leader Dugald Saunders told Crikey his party had always fielded candidates in Port Macquarie since the seat was created in 1988.
“We were always going to run a candidate in the upcoming byelection, and I’m looking forward to working with the community and having the best possible candidate on the ground to win the seat,” he said.
The Liberals, for their part, reckon the seat is fair game because Williams was reelected there as a member of their party in 2023. NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman said in a statement at the weekend his party was hoping to build on Williams’ achievements as a local member.
“The NSW Liberal Party is committed to ensuring that legacy continues, and we will fight every step of the way to give the people of Port Macquarie the representation they deserve,” he said.
While Nationals MPs who briefed Crikey on the situation have been keen to frame Speakman’s decision as contentious within the Liberal caucus, a state Liberal source told Crikey there was consensus the party should be running.
“Port Macquarie is no longer a rural or regional seat, and the Liberal Party is best suited to run and to win this seat,” the person said.
A state Nationals source said some federal party colleagues had been disappointed by the Liberals’ decision to contest the seat, adding the Nationals had enough to worry about in retaining the overlapping federal seat of Cowper.
Last federal election, independent challenger Caz Heise nearly managed to wrest Cowper from the incumbent Pat Conaghan, leaving the formerly safe Nationals seat on a post-election margin of just 2.4%.
Heise, who receives backing from the Regional Voices Fund — framed by its leaders as a regional answer to Simon Holmes à Court’s city-focused Climate 200 organisation — is planning to run again in the upcoming federal election.
In the neighbouring federal seat of Lyne, the Nationals member David Gillespie is retiring, and there is a chance there will be independent challengers there as well.
“Cowper and Lyne are important to the Coalition, particularly Cowper is crucial to hold,” the state Nationals source said.
Election analyst William Bowe, who runs the blog The Poll Bludger, told Crikey that Coalition agreements usually divide up seats to avoid the partners running against each other, but that the situation in Port Macquarie wasn’t totally unique.
“Sometimes when there is a vacancy, the understanding becomes that all bets are off and they get to scrap over it,” he said.
In the regional Victorian federal seat of Mallee, Liberals and Nationals faced off in 2013 and 2019, with the Nationals winning both times. The same thing happened in Nicholls, also in regional Victoria, in 2022. In the NSW seat of Farrer, Liberal Sussan Ley beat a Nationals rival in the 2001 election, and in 1998, Liberals and Nationals both ran for the NSW seat of Hume.
According to the ABC’s election analyst Antony Green, three-cornered races between Nationals, Liberals and Labor used to be much more prevalent, with fewer than 8% of seats seeing that kind of contest in the six elections to 2019, compared with 40% of all seats in the mid-1980s.
Leslie Williams told Crikey she doesn’t know yet when the byelection might be held, but that she is “retiring in the coming weeks”.
Her earliest opportunity would be in mid-February when state Parliament next sits. After that, the Parliament’s speaker would consult with the NSW Electoral Commission about the byelection date, with the tendency being to hold it as soon as possible to avoid a vacant chair in the lower house.
The federal election will likely be held by May 17 at the latest, but the prime minister hasn’t announced a date yet.
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