Tony Abbott has been slapped down by the defence industry minister, Christopher Pyne, in the party room 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 backbench 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.
Sitting behind Tuesday’s exchange is a bitter fight roiling inside the NSW division of the Liberal party between conservatives and moderates over party rules in the state.
The democratisation push in NSW splits the party 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.
Over this 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 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 a 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.
Trent Zimmerman, a Sydney Liberal MP and a former state president, told Abbott during the regular party room meeting he believed that mechanisms allowing grassroots party members to contribute to policy-making were more important to the membership than getting more power to contribute to preselections, which only occur infrequently, particularly in safe seats.
Abbott had kicked off the discussion by asking for Malcolm Turnbull to express a view on plebiscites.
Turnbull told the meeting he was supportive in principle of the Victorian model for preselections, which involves plebiscites, but he told MPs change needed to be rolled out carefully.
Turnbull told the meeting on Tuesday the biggest challenge facing the Liberal party was attracting more members.
