Tony Abbott has publicly challenged Malcolm Turnbull to lead a democratisation push in New South Wales as he launched a stinging broadside against colleagues for leaking his tussle in Tuesday’s party room meeting.
The former prime minister told Guardian Australia he was “dismayed” by the leaks after Tuesday’s regular party room meeting in Canberra. “It’s a cancer on our polity – this culture of leaking.”
“The fact that people readily leak pejorative stuff to damage colleagues is pretty dishonourable I think,” Abbott said on Tuesday afternoon.
“Leaks are poisoning our political culture.”
Shortly after Tuesday’s regular party room gathering of Liberal MPs, reports surfaced, including in Guardian Australia, that Abbott had been slapped down by the defence industry minister, Christopher Pyne, for raising a proposal to democratise Liberal party preselection procedures in New South Wales.
Pyne rebuked Abbott on Tuesday after he exchanged cross words with Liberal backbencher MP Julian Leeser about plebiscites in NSW preselections.
According to party room sources, Abbott had declared angrily that Leeser “did not believe in democracy for Liberal party members” before Pyne expressed an objection to Abbott bringing state organisational matters into the federal party room.
Abbott later told Guardian Australia it was “absolutely appropriate” for issues within the NSW division to be ventilated in Canberra because the Coalition had “almost lost the [federal] election in NSW”.
He remarked that it was “just crackers” to say state organisational issues could not be considered during party room meetings in Canberra given organisational issues in electorates and in various states were considered all the time.
“This line that it shouldn’t be raised in the party room is self-serving at best,” Abbott said – returning the rebuke to Pyne.
On the issue of reform of preselections, Abbott said it was important to revitalise procedures in NSW, which was a division that had been run by “factional warlords”.
Abbott said allowing the membership to preselect candidates was “an absolutely vital reform, and it’s absolutely vital it gets support from the top, from Mike Baird and from Malcolm Turnbull”.
He said the prime minister should consider supporting a proposed “one member, one vote” resolution from the Warringah conference which would impose plebiscites across the division. The annual general meeting of the NSW Liberal division is scheduled for 22 October.
Abbott said he had supported a reform at last year’s state conference that imposed trials of plebiscites because at that point there was an election looming but the division now had breathing space to consider a permanent change.
Turnbull could take the lead on the issue by insisting that the state executive urgently prepare amendments to the existing procedures, Abbott said.
Over the past weekend the president of Abbott’s federal electoral conference in Warringah warned the NSW Liberal party “is in an unprecedented crisis that has many of the characteristics that prompted Sir Robert Menzies to establish the Liberal party in the first place”.
In a missive inviting all state party members to a democratic reform convention to be held in Sydney this coming weekend, Walter Villatora told members “our party has lost its heart and soul”.
Abbott is scheduled to speak this weekend at the forum being organised by Villatora to press for an overhaul of the rules governing preselections.
Also appearing at the forum will be Angus Taylor, the assistant minister for cities and digital transformation, and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, the minister for international development and the Pacific.
Saturday’s event follows a recent public intervention from former prime minister John Howard, who used a National Press Club event to urge Turnbull and Baird to change the membership rules of the NSW Liberal party.
Howard described the state division as being close to a “closed shop”.
The fight in NSW largely splits along factional lines. The right is leading the push for change, the moderates have resisted the push. The NSW state executive is controlled by the moderates.
The right complains about the role of party lobbyists in party affairs and preselections. The moderates argue that some of the current acrimony is a proxy war for ongoing leadership tensions inside the Liberal party.
Opponents of rolling out the plebiscite model more widely in NSW point out that the party has had a history of branch stacking in the state, and activating the membership on preselections would potentially make that situation worse.
They also point out that handing preselections over to the membership would create conditions where the organisational wing would lack scope to intervene when poor choices were made, leading to the potential loss of seats.
