If you thought the factional war that tore apart the NSW Liberal Party on the eve of the recent federal election was a blockbuster, then strap yourself in (sequels always promise to be bigger and better).

First, let’s recap the original.

The NSW Liberal Party is notorious for being the most factionally acrimonious state division in the country. It has been since the 1940s. Occasionally these organisational wing disputes make a ripple in the press, but the one earlier this year was, for several weeks, on the front page of our broadsheets and a lead in our evening news bulletins. Few would have followed the arcane detail but they got the gist: Scott Morrison wanted to prevent his party’s grassroots membership choosing candidates because he wanted to do the choosing. What Morrison did smelled bad because it was bad. After several rounds in court and the expulsion of the key agitator (Matthew Camenzuli) Morrison got his way but coinciding with the horrendous press was the advent of horrendous polling.

Most assumed the NSW Division had learnt its lesson the hard way – surely the party could never again deny members a vote for who their candidates will be? Surely to do so would see a repeat of campaign-crippling membership outrage and bad press…

Premier Dominic Perrottet certainly seemed to agree. Just two months after the federal loss, Perrottet told the NSW Liberal Party state council on 2 August 2022:

Many members have raised concerns about the pre-selection process – and they’re right. One of the most important rights of party members is the power to select candidates to represent your values. This State Council made a decision for democratic reform. And I as your Parliamentary Leader am committed to implementing that decision. So today I can announce that within the next two weeks we will open preselections for every electorate for next year’s election.

These were more than fine words. Perrottet has longstanding credibility with the democratic reform movement in the NSW Division. When I kicked off the campaign to democratise preselections in 2011, my first co-pilot was the newly elected member for Castle Hill – 29-year-old Dominic Perrottet. Others came along later and did more for the cause (most notably Walter Villatora and Jim Molan), but in those early friendless days, the only friend the campaign had was Perrottet. He and I put together an email database of almost every current and former member of the division – we had over 20,000 email addresses. We sent out at least a dozen emails to the membership and in the process persuaded them that the members should choose candidates – not factional bosses. They were controversial emails resulting in two attempts to expel me as they were in my name, but Perrottet was the (silent) co-author.

I got to know Perrottet well during that period. He is smart, honourable, likeable, and possesses a solid intellectual interest in conservative-libertarian ideas. He was passionate about democratic reform as a way to defang the factions … which makes it hard to understand what has happened to the freedom fighter I knew a decade ago.

Perrottet said in August this year that preselections would commence in two weeks. Four months later there has been a mere six preselections for the 93 lower house seats and none for the upper house. Sure there are a few National Party seats the party doesn’t contest and some seats have only one nominee, but with just over a 100 days to the NSW state election (and six weeks of holidays in between) many currently held Liberal seats have no candidate including Wakehurst, Pittwater, Kiama, Parramatta, Drummoyne, Kellyville, and Riverstone. What about marginally held Labor seats? None have a candidate.

The myopic factional hotshots are repeating precisely what they did in the run-up to the federal election – running down the clock. If they keep engineering a delay then they’ll come out the other side of the holidays and say, ‘Gee we wanted to hold democratic preselections but somehow time has overtaken us and, low and behold, the election’s upon us so I suppose the premier will just have to appoint candidates.’ Earlier this year this strategy was successful internally – Morrison did get to appoint a dozen or so candidates – but it was vote repellent in the election. I wonder whether dictatorial appointments will work a second time? When a party refuses to hold or honour a democratic preselection, it crushes the support the party needs from donors, volunteers, and voters. Most importantly it deters quality candidates from nominating as they correctly conclude, ‘What’s the point?’

What is happening in the seat of Castle Hill is most appalling. David Elliott has been the member in that area since 2011. Most MPs are immune to a preselection challenge because as they get around their electorate they will, from time to time, meet enthusiastic supporters. A good MP will persuade some to become a local branch member. Those new members are loyal to the incumbent and so their preselection is shored up. Elliott, however, lacked the likeability to do that. On top of that, most local branch members thought Elliott was overly zealous in his mean-spirited and illiberal pursuit of police-enforced lockdowns and so Elliott has wisely decided not to recontest his preselection. The frontrunner to win the Castle Hill preselection is Noel McCoy – a former NSW and federal Young Liberal president and now a partner at one of Australia’s largest law firms. He’s squeaky clean, super-smart, and so successful that entering Parliament will result in a significant pay cut (few preselection candidates can say that).

The party’s highest levels however, (looking at your Premier Perrottet) have said McCoy is not even allowed to nominate. His crime? Mild, low-key criticisms of the Morrison and Berejiklian governments’ response to Covid – how radical! Is the NSW Liberal Party suggesting that if one of the Chinese Covid protestors escapes from a gulag tonight, gets to Australia as a refugee, and then joins the Liberal Party that they cannot be a candidate for Parliament … because they disagreed with a government’s Covid response? Yes – that is what the NSW Liberal Party is effectively saying.

Over the weekend Matthew Camenzuli went public with plans to run ‘Choice 200’ candidates where there has been no Liberal Party democratic preselection. When I spoke with Camenzuli he said his preference is simply for the party rules to be honoured and for democratic preselections to proceed but he didn’t sound hopeful that would happen and therefore he would pull that trigger. ‘They’ve going to learn their lesson either the easy way or the hard way,’ Mr Camenzuli said.

John Ruddick is the Liberal Democrats upper house candidate for the NSW election and the author of Make the Liberal Party Great Again.

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