There is a proxy war going on in the New South Wales Liberal party right now. It is about the party rules: who can join, how they join and what they get when they join.
It is factional, in that the people generally who support “democratisation” of the rules tend to be on the right. The hotbed for this movement is in the Liberal heartland on the north shore and northern beaches of Sydney.
Supporters of reform are generally more likely to support Tony Abbott than Malcolm Turnbull. The moderates, closer to the centre and more likely to support the current prime minister, are against the changes given the moderates already control the party’s state executive.
The right want to open up branch structures, establish plebiscites to give all members a say in the preselection of the local member and have even considered primary elections. Some support the principles, others think it will give them more power.
While this issue does not begin and end with factions, that is the current prism through which it is seen.
But the change has already occurred in all but one Liberal state and territory divisions of Australia. The former federal president John Valder called for plebiscites in 1983 and, after the Liberal defeat of John Hewson’s Fightback in 1993, the ACT, Queensland and Tasmania changed their rules in 1994. South Australia changed in 2008 and Victoria changed in 2010.
Abbott is a supporter of NSW plebiscites, though he failed to move on reforms during his prime ministership, notwithstanding the 2014 recommendations by John Howard. With hindsight, it has become clear to Abbott what might have been.
Enter the assistant minister for cities and digital transformation, Angus Taylor, at the beginning of his political career rather than at the end. On Tuesday, he chose to speak to the Sydney Institute on this topic – not in a cursory, veiled way but in a strap-on-the-vest kind of way. (As if it had been neatly choreographed, Howard backed in Taylor in his National Press Club speech on Wednesday.)
Taylor’s charges against the NSW party include:
- people are regularly stopped from joining branches in order for powerbrokers to maintain control;
- people are regularly stopped from establishing branches for the same reason;
- as a result, the Liberal party is in danger of losing future elections and losing a valuable engagement with the community.
He gave a concrete example of trying to establish a Cowra Liberal party branch – a site he chose because it was far from the “brutal” internal factional battles of inner city Sydney. The state executive rejected the application, saying there was too much risk of another faction (centre right) coming in to stack the branch, take control of the numbers and thereby increase its power in state council.
“Whether you agree with party reform or not, I don’t think anyone can seriously contest the proposition that the effect of all this is discourage some good Liberal supporters from joining the party,” Taylor said.
The moderates say that they need to control the party so they can get the best talent up, given ordinary party members tend to be more rightwing than the parliamentary party. This reflects the Labor reform struggle, where the ordinary party membership tends to be more leftwing than the parliamentary party.
But if that is the party – too left or too right – why not reflect it? And if it’s on a hiding to nothing because of a crazy right (or left) wing policy list, there is nothing like a few election losses to calibrate policies back to the winnable centre.
