Tony Abbott has warned that lobbyists holding positions as power brokers in the Liberal party creates the potential for corruption.
The former prime minister called for more democratic preselections to water down factional power in Monday’s episode of ABC’s Four Corners, which will focus on Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership and the state of the Liberal party.
“There is absolutely no doubt there is a dominant faction, there is a dominant individual inside that faction, and that individual is a lobbyist,” Abbott told the Four Corners program.
“The difficulty at the moment is that because it is a smaller, less representative party, it is easily controlled by factional warlords,” he said.
The statements openly contradict statements by Turnbull to the New South Wales state council in October, that the Liberal party was not run by factions or back-room deals, claims which were scoffed at by Liberal party members.
“Some of these factional warlords have a commercial interest in dealing with politicians whose preselections they can influence,” Abbott said.
He said this created a “potentially corrupt position”. “The best way to see off the factionalists is to open up the party – the more members we’ve got, the harder it is for the factional warlords to control.
“There are people not on the state executive who caucus regularly on the phone and face-to-face with people who are on the executive to try and get pre-cooked outcomes.”
Abbott said he wanted to empower the membership by letting them choose Liberal candidates for parliament. The call for more democratic preselections is likely to re-open a debate between moderates and conservatives over how candidates are chosen.
It's on. Tony Abbott lobs a grenade into the Turnbull camp, on #4Corners #auspol pic.twitter.com/rpH57623QP
— Sally Neighbour (@neighbour_s) August 7, 2016
It follows a push in October by the president of the Warringah federal electorate conference, Walter Villatora, to introduce plebiscites of all local members to determine preselections.
At present, a combination of delegates from local branches and head office decides who is endorsed as a candidate.
Villatora settled for a compromise to trial a plebiscite in one federal NSW metropolitan seat for the 2016 election, two seats for the following federal election, and three seats for the 2019 state election.
According to reports, the NSW Liberal party president and MP for North Sydney, Trent Zimmerman, has hit back at Abbott’s comments, saying some lobbyists were being demonised by their opponents in the party.
He told Four Corners no conflict of interest around lobbyists in the party had been demonstrated.
Zimmerman defended the role of high-profile lobbyist Michael Photios, a leading member of the moderate faction who sits on the board of two influential lobbying companies, Premier State Consulting and Capital Hill Advisory.
He described Photios as “a person who contributes enormously to the party and its strengths”.
Abbott did not make any allegations of corrupt or improper behaviour.
Decreasing the influence of lobbyists has been a long-term cause of the former prime minister, who called for greater democratisation of the party in a speech to the Liberal party State Council in 2013.
At his first cabinet meeting after being elected in September 2013, Abbott banned registered lobbyists from holding party offices, saying: “I’m determined to ensure you can either be a powerbroker or a lobbyist but you can’t be both.”
Four Corners reporter Marian Wilkinson told ABC News Breakfast the program would also feature some hard-heads in the Liberal party who will discuss the “immense difficulty” Turnbull will face governing with a “wafer-thin one-seat majority in the lower house and a very fractious Senate”.
