The president of Tony Abbott’s federal electoral conference in Warringah has warned the New South Wales 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 next week, Walter Villatora tells members “our party has lost its heart and soul”.
“The new forgotten people are not the millions of middle-class Australians of concern to Menzies but the very members of today’s NSW Liberal party,” the circular says.
And in a swipe against prominent lobbyists aligned with the party’s moderate wing, it says the time has come “for our party leaders to either prolong the dominance of our party by commercial interests or to side with the membership and basic democratic values”.
According to the circular, among the speakers to address the Sydney forum are Tony Abbott, Angus Taylor – the assistant minister for cities and digital transformation, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells – the minister for international development and the Pacific.
Both the prime minister and the NSW premier have been invited to the event. Reformers are pressing both men to take a decisive leadership role on party reform in their home state as one mechanism for countering their current political problems.
One party source argued Turnbull and Baird taking a frontline role would help counter perceptions they were removed from the grassroots of the Liberal party.
The two leaders are being lobbied to move a motion at the annual general meeting of the NSW Liberal division on 22 October both requiring the party to democratise and to drive lobbyists out of positions where they can wield factional influence.
Next 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 describing the state division as being close to a “closed shop”.
The former prime minister said party reform was only possible if the prime minister and the state premier supported a switch to plebiscites to allow ordinary party members to choose their MPs.
“I would hope both of them, who have expressed broad support for a more democratic approach, I would hope that they would bring their influence to bear because it needs their influence to bring about the change,” Howard said in early September.
In a recent speech to the Sydney Institute, Angus Taylor warned the party in NSW was heading for “oblivion” if it didn’t democratise.
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.
There have also been vociferous complaints from the right about the role of party lobbyists in party affairs and preselections.
The latest circular makes the case for plebiscites to resolve preselections. “In a plebiscite system the approximately 8,000 members of the NSW Liberal party would be eligible to vote in a Senate and upper house preselections – impossible to manipulate, producing a true merit-based system.”
“There are many thousands of people in NSW who are true blue Liberal supporters and former members disillusioned with the lack of democracy in our party. Those people will rejoin overnight when we democratise.”
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