WARRINGAH Liberals are in open dispute with their Party hierarchy with some demanding the sacking of the State’s most senior Party officials.
As factional games drag on, anger is increasing towards NSW Liberal President Philip Ruddock and his State Director Chris Stone.
- Factional bosses have been scrambling to side-step the new plebiscite rules in an effort to look after their mates.
- If that happens, it will cause total anarchy, according to a Party insider.
Despite Warringah having a legitimate candidate ready to campaign, the Party has withheld approval for defence expert Lincoln Parker and re-opened nominations.
The move is believed to be part of a larger factional deal to recruit a Left-leaning candidate into Warringah.
ALIGNED
Mr Parker is not factionally aligned.
With a federal election scheduled for May, Warringah Liberals have gone public with their anger.
A photograph showing a graffitied Liberal Party office in Warringah has gone viral on social media and has subsequently appeared in mainstream media reports.
While it is uncertain whether the graffiti is real – or photoshoped in – the messages are clear.
“Ruddock, Stone Out” and “Plebiscites Now”.
The hand-written “plebiscite” poster is a reference to the preselection vote Party members are entitled to under 2017 amendments to the NSW Liberal constitution.
Factional bosses have been scrambling to side-step the new plebiscite rules in an effort to guarantee their own “preferred” mates are pre-selected.
FAILED
Since re-opening nominations, two additional candidates have joined the race against Mr Parker. Left-backed David Brady, who failed in his senate nomination before switching to Warringah, and solicitor Katherine Deves.
“These posters on the Liberal Party office epitomise the total frustration of the rank and file of the Party in Warringah,” a senior Liberal insider told The Daily Telegraph this week.
“The members are bracing themselves for a candidate to be forced on them because the dominant moderate [Left] faction feels it’s losing control.
“If that happens, it will cause total anarchy.”
A Party insider also told The Telegraph that Mr Parker, who chairs the Liberal Party (NSW) Defence & National Security Policy Branch; has worked in defence research and technology development and; is a regular media commentator on national security issues, has been making a good impression on Liberal members at recent branch meetings.PC
Where has the Warringah FEC Executive and our duty senator Bragg been hiding to allow the parachuting of a non pre-selected into the electorate as our candidate?
Members are angry that the only news of these insidious activities comes from the media. What we want to know is what action is being taken by the above to protect members’ interests.
They will soon discover that the parachute has a large hole in it.
Given the lamentable judgement that (Liberal and Labor) Party executives have shown when parachuting candidates into electorates in defiance of the pre-selected candidate as voted by the local Party members….I simply ask: Why do parties not learn? For what possible (valid) reason would one join a party only to be over-ridden in the selection of the local candidate??
Not just Warringah, and not just the most senior needing to go. This rubbish is playing out in every electorate, it’s state executive and out of touch MPs in open defiance of the membership and the voters.
Gilmore again suffers a captain’s pick, because, after all, that worked so well for Liberal fortunes last time. Hey, who needs plebiscites, when a few phone calls from William St can shoulder tap all other contenders. But hey, we your party leaders, we’ll serve you up a bloke who up and walked away from his responsibilities in a state electorate, mid term. Can Gilmore expect to see that same loyalty as was shown to the voters of Bega? Especially given that Gilmore wasn’t the preferred choice until after a failed squabble over Eden-Monaro.
Meanwhile those in the north of Gilmore get twice the fun, with their elected member due to face the courts and all but barred for any parliamentary representation of its voters in the interim. Not only do the NSW Liberal hierarchy see fit to to over-ride the membership and the voters, we no have a state premier seeing fit to pre-empt our courts.
I love what the Liberal party is meant to stand for, it’s a damn shame it elected MPs and organisation have lost all sight of those ideals. A Labor-Lite Liberal party is every but as unelectable as the Albanese led circus.
Yes they’ll all have to go, if you fail to represent your voter base, you’ll soon fail to have a voter base, a fact vividly demonstrated over a series of recent elections.
But hey guys, pre-select your factional mates, run a climate change agenda, keep assuming the voters are all idiots. It’ll be fun and profit until those same voters catch on, and 2022 is looking like the year that they will.
As as true Menzies Liberal, today’s Liberal party will end up at the bottom of my voting paper, and my senate vote will be below the line, I’ll select who represents me, I don’t need any grubby faction to decide that for me.