Liberal factions baulk at democracy
Peta Credlin
The Australian
12:00AM February 7, 2018
The problem for all established political parties around the Western world is the growing disconnect between insiders and outsiders. A party that merely pays lip service to its own members is hardly likely to take voters’ concerns seriously. Seeking a third term and defending a one-seat majority, the only way for the Liberals to win is to enthuse people, starting with their own members, because the Coalition is up against Labor, the Greens, the deep pockets of the union movement and activists such as GetUp!
Last July, Malcolm Turnbull told the NSW Liberal Party’s reform convention that he supported full democratisation: “We must ensure,” the Prime Minister said, “that every member of our party has a say in preselections in every measure, every step of our party’s processes.” The members duly took heed, passing by more than 700 votes to 400 a resolution demanding one member, one vote ballots for all party positions: for lower house candidates, for upper house candidates and for members of the state executive.
But now the factional fightback is on. You would think with such a resounding vote from the rank and file, this Saturday’s NSW Liberal state council would just endorse the people’s vote; after all, wasn’t that what we were told needed to happen, and did, following the same-sex marriage plebiscite? Not so, it seems, when it comes to wresting power away from factional players and back into the hands of the ordinary party member. This weekend there will also be a rival position, the so-called “Bennelong motion”, put to the state council that protects the factions by bringing in only a little bit of democracy, and then only in five years. The waters are being further muddied by a so-called “unity ticket” for positions on the state executive which includes opponents of reform such as former immigration minister Philip Ruddock as well as supporters such as former NSW attorney-general Greg Smith.
For years the NSW Liberal Party has been controlled by a left-leaning faction associated with former NSW minister Michael Photios, who’s now a well-connected lobbyist. And for years, in response, Liberal Party members have been trying to reclaim their party by arguing for candidate selection by the ordinary rank and file rather than preselections by small groups of easily manipulated insiders. For instance, in 1994, Tony Abbott was preselected by almost 200 mostly local delegates from a field of 14 contenders including two future MPs, a future Supreme Court judge, and a future chairman of Macquarie Bank. Back then the Liberals were so unlike an insiders’ club that a former party president and a former party vice-president were among the defeated candidates. By the time Joe Hockey retired two decades on, it had become a virtual closed shop. Just 100 delegates, only 50 of them locals, picked a former party president (and Hockey’s long-term staffer) over just two other candidates.
Talented outsiders knew not to run because of the factional fix.It was the same in the Senate, where a small group of party insiders picked another insider ahead of retired army general Jim Molan AO, DSC ,who’s only now fluked his way into parliament because others were knocked out on constitutional grounds.
In 2012, a legal challenge had to be mounted to try to force the NSW state council to even consider democratising the party, but that bid failed. Then, in late 2013, both then-PM Abbott and then-premier Barry O’Farrell personally fronted the state executive to demand reform. You know things are crook when the factions even tried rolling a sitting PM and premier but fortunately, with the president’s casting vote, the two leaders prevailed and the reform process was underway with the establishment of a committee chaired by former PM John Howard. The Howard committee recommended rank-and-file preselections for lower house seats only, but even this modest reform was subject to stalling tactics.
In late 2016, with state and federal elections out of the way, a new reform push by members forced the Liberal establishment to convene a “futures convention” where every member across NSW would be able to attend, speak and vote on the best way forward. Last July, despite being charged $150 each, more than 1200 members turned up at Rosehill Racecourse and voted by almost two to one for the principle of one member, one vote. But the factional insiders are refusing to respect its outcome.
Ideally, the state council this weekend would consider only the Rosehill resolution, but those opposed to reform have finally put up the old Howard recommendations they ignored three years ago, only they’ve proposed delaying rank-and-file preselections — which are just for the lower houses anyway — until 2022 for federal and until 2023 for state parliament. These changes have long been overtaken by the Rosehill proposal for open upper and lower house preselections.
Without reform to the upper house where the factional operatives are mostly parked, and leaving the factions running state executive, there’s no real change. In other words, it hardly disturbs the factional stranglehold, the sinecures and the influence peddling: it’s the reform you concede when you are determined to stop real reform.