The editor of Quadrant Online, which with our very own Speccie is one of the incredibly few solidly right-of-centre publications in this country, reminds me of something I said in print for them back in 2014. Just before the Victorian state Libs ambled towards a November electoral loss that year I wrote that the Victorian state Liberal party, ‘was given the chance by the pre-selection battle for the seat of Hawthorn to bring in new blood – the IPA’s John Roskam – but opted instead for John Pesutto, Premier Denis Napthine’s legal adviser and a consummate insider. Given a choice, the prize went to the connected candidate who worked his way up through the party hierarchy. The safe choice. The insider’s choice.  The party shunned the outsider who brought the evident promise of principles and convictions to the table – and this is tragically typical behaviour on the part of a party now facing the very real prospect of utter defeat in November’s election…’

That was nine years ago. And after nine years of heavy-handed (and during the Covid years make that thuggish and illiberal) Dan Andrews-led Labor government are any of those pre-selectors regretting their choice of that same consummate insider John Pesutto? Be honest. No one with an IQ over 60 (so with any luck that might, just might, include at least a few of the state Liberal MPs and maybe one or two Liberal party preselectors in Victoria) now believes that Pesutto can lead the Libs to victory in the next state election. Look, I despise the authoritarian way in which Andrews has governed Victoria more than just about anyone living outside Victoria. I was a lockdown sceptic from day one don’t forget, so seeing thuggish politicians punished for what they did to us is one of my top priorities. But I would spoil my ballot before I ever voted for Pesutto after the way he has treated Moira Deeming. If Pesutto and the bulk of the party room cannot see that they are on the wrong side of this dispute – in free speech terms, in terms of travelling down the ‘guilt by association’ road, in preferencing the transgender activists over women, by responding almost immediately in line with the lefty social media framing of issues which, if they’d waited a day they’d have seen was wholly wrong (sound familiar Mr Morrison, the man who couldn’t grasp the concept of the presumption of innocence?), even in basic ‘this party represents a range of views’ terms – then it deserves to lose and lose badly. Pesutto has got to go. Now. Heck, I wish that Kellie-Jay Keen and the other ‘Let Women Speak’ organisers were also suing him for defamation. It would be fascinating to see what sort of defence the man tried to run.

But back to my core point back in 2014 about the sort of insider, connected candidates who far too many Liberal preselectors are inclined to choose. I put it bluntly a decade ago when I noted that the ‘Coalition caucus is full of too many insiders and party hacks’. Any readers think things have improved since then?

Remember Howard government staffer Paul Fletcher who won the Bradfield, NSW preselection in 2009 over a big field including former editor of this magazne and today head of the Centre for Independent Studies, Tom Switzer? What has Fletcher done other than support the party room defenestration of then prime minister Tony Abbott as one of the two Malcolm Turnbull numbers men?  Another key figure in the Turnbull coup was John Howard’s former chief of staff turned senator, Arthur Sinodinos. Or go and take a look at Simon Birmingham’s career before going into politics. It basically provides a road map of how to be a member of the insider, connected class.

Or consider the man who Queensland LNP Senate preselectors decided was a better candidate than Amanda Stoker. They put him in the first spot and knocked her down to an unwinnable one. This is one James McGrath (who, by the way, was the other numbers man for Turnbull in his political assassination of Abbott).

McGrath started politics nice and early as the president of the Griffith University Liberal club. He worked with the Queensland Parliamentary Ombudsman for a couple of years. Oh, and he was a political strategist with Lynton Crosby on Boris Johnson’s successful 2008 London mayoral campaign.  (Yes, that Crosby of Textor-Crosby, the same Textor who said the Liberal party can just ignore the conservative party base because these voters have nowhere else to go and will give the Libs their preference votes eventually – how has that worked out?)

What baffles me is what the Queensland LNP preselectors were thinking to preference one of the main Team Turnbull defenestrators of Tony Abbott over Amanda Stoker. Did they not know McGrath had done this to Abbott? Did they not care? Did they think that smart, conservative women like Stoker who will stand up for core values (more than any others, at any rate) just grow on trees?  So, heck, why not go with the consummate party insider and careerist option who spent all sorts of time wooing them?

The Liberal party gets the MPs its preselectors give them. What these preselectors need to start doing, now, is to flat out stop choosing anyone who has spent most of his or her working life as an insider – ministerial aides, university politics, jobs in political consulting, what have you. If your whole life has been wrapped up in politics then its crowning achievement is to get into parliament. It’s an end-in-itself rather than a means to accomplishing things. And staying there becomes more important than anything else, certainly more than standing up for core values, fighting the culture wars, making the sort of enemies that Winston Churchill said were the only sure sign of a politician of quality.

Dozens and dozens and dozens of British MPs, Conservative party MPs to be clear, voted against their own Boris Johnson government over various aspects of its heavy-handed lockdown response to Covid – a patently failed response as the Swedish cumulative excess death data now makes plain. But here in Australia? Where were all the Libs who had talked such a big game about freedom to get preselection? People like James Paterson. Did any of them cross the floor to vote against their own government on principle? Well, a George Christensen here and an Alex Antic there. But that’s it. Or likewise did they put principle over career when it came to the idiocies of the Morrison government move re net zero?

The Liberal party needs to start preselecting outsiders who’ve had real jobs outside politics for some time. The sort of people they used to pick to run for parliament.  Because what they’re doing right now is giving us the wrong sort of Johns, Pesuttos rather than Roskams. The results are on offer at the state level across this country and fill near-on half the national party room. That’s why, by the way, Peter Dutton is having to fight some of his own party room on this atrocious Voice referendum.