Former prime minister says state division almost a ‘closed shop’ and ordinary party members should be allowed to choose MPs

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

John Howard has called on Malcolm Turnbull and Mike Baird to change the membership rules of the New South Wales Liberal party, describing the state division as close to a “closed shop” and less representative of ordinary voters.

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.

“It won’t happen otherwise, that’s the dynamic of political parties, particularly on our side of politics.”

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Howard also had some advice for the Liberal party before his new ABC series on Robert Menzies. He said if the Turnbull government was disciplined and united behind “an understandable, well-articulated agenda”, the Coalition would survive three years in office.

“So that’s [Menzies’] history but, relating it to current circumstances, the message from that period was that if you are disciplined, and you are united behind a program, you will survive,” Howard said. “There is no reason why … the current government can’t survive three years.”

Howard also touched on the donations debate after the Sam Dastyari affair. He rejected suggestions made among some Liberal MPs of restricting political donations to individuals on the electoral roll.

Howard said cutting out corporations, for example, would be a restriction of political freedom and, as for a ban on foreign donations, he said too many people were dual citizens. Such a ban would be difficult to enforce. But he backed faster disclosure rules.

“If anybody makes a donation, it’s got to be disclosed in a more timely fashion,” Howard said.

“You can debate as to, a month or two months or whatever, but in a more timely fashion. I think arguments that it’s not timely enough are understandable.”

Howard’s comments came after the assistant minister for cities and digital transformation, Angus Taylor, called for reform of the party rules.

“I share his analysis about the need to alter particularly the preselection system,” Howard said of Taylor’s intervention. “There is a mounting view amongst Liberals and Liberal supporters in Sydney that, when it comes to preselections in safe Liberal seats, the Liberal party is near to a closed shop.

“For a party that has rightly, in my view, campaigned hard against closed shops in the industrial relations arena, we should not allow it to continue.”

The NSW Liberal party is the last state division to change the rules to allow a greater say for members in party preselections.

After he was commissioned to examine the rules by the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, Howard made recommendations in 2014 to change the rules in favour of plebiscites.

Abbott supported the change but did not make any moves as leader. Since losing the leadership, he has campaigned loudly inside and outside the party room for reform.

Support for the change in the state division is generally held along factional lines, with supporters of Abbott favouring reform and supporters of Malcolm Turnbull, known as the moderates, against the rule change. The NSW state executive is controlled by the moderates.

The Victorian division changed its rules to allow plebiscites in 2010 and, after the former trade minister Andrew Robb retired, the former human rights commissioner Tim Wilson won against Georgina Downer, lawyer and daughter of the former foreign minister Alexander Downer.

Howard praised the preselections in other states and said both the Liberal party and the Labor party were less representative due to the lower memberships of political parties.

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“I think the preselection systems in some of the other states are better and I’m not decrying the broad quality of people but, over time, membership of political parties is lower than it used to be,” Howard said.

“The Liberal party now – and I’m sure the same applies to the Labor party – is less representative of the generality of people who vote for the parties and I think we do need two fundamental reforms.

“We need fundamental reform giving everybody who belongs to the Liberal party in a particular area and has done so for a reasonable period of time … a vote in choosing the candidate.

“And the other thing, we should, instead of making it hard to establish party branches, we should make it easier.”

Taylor, who is the member for Hume, which stretches from northwest of Canberra to southwestern Sydney, said he had tried to establish a branch in Cowra but the application was rejected on the grounds it could be vulnerable to factional branch stacking.

“There was, in fact, zero prospect of that,” Taylor said. “Cowra is a long way from anywhere and if powerbrokers had shown interest in joining the Cowra branch the metaphorical shotguns would have come out.

“Those country Liberals would simply not have tolerated it. This was a turning point for me. At that point I switched to being a polite, private supporter of party reform to committing myself to bringing it about.”