This amounts to nearly 13 per cent of all those now in key positions within the Liberals’ organisational wing, compared to just 0.3 per cent of all Australians who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Combined with conservative Catholics, evangelical Christians from churches such as Victory Faith Centre and City Builders, the religious right-wing now has unprecedented sway in Liberal Party politics. Loading And Stratov – a senior Mormon who won a coveted spot on the administrative committee – is their most influential figure. When conservative Liberals embarked on an anti-Safe Schools roadshow across Victoria last year to highlight concerns about the program, Stratov was a headline act.

When state MPs debated changing euthanasia laws, the scientist whose papers are peer reviewed, sat on a panel at the party’s Exhibition Street headquarters warning them against it. And when acolytes of new state vice-president Marcus Bastiaan and federal MP Michael Sukkar embarked on a takeover of the Victorian branch, Stratov was one of Bastiaan's key lieutenants. The Bastiaan-Sukkar forces have long argued that recruiting new members is critical to fighting Labor’s well-oiled campaign machine. Rising Liberal Party star Marcus Bastiaan. Credit:Jesse Marlow But it does represent a changing of the guard, and it raises some serious questions for the Liberal Party.

Will party policy on social issues shift sharply to the right? Would such a shift risk Matthew Guy’s shot at being Premier at November’s election? And now that the power balance has altered, what does Stratov and his band of new recruits want? According to Nielsen pollster John Stirton, internal party machinations don't tend to resonate with voters - unless it manifests in policy decisions or "what the leader can and can't do''. But some insiders believe the early consequences of this upheaval are already being felt, with about 1800 people not renewing their party membership by the end of May’s deadline. Loading Part of the drift is attributed to dissatisfaction with the Turnbull government or Matthew Guy's team; another part to political fatigue more broadly. But some concerned members also cite unease at the party’s ongoing lurch to the right.

The Mormons and other church groups may not have a numerical majority across the Victorians Liberals’ 12,000-odd membership, but they have advantages - they are well-organised, they turn out to vote, and they are coalescing against rapid social change. Already the new power bloc is using its numbers. After seizing control at April’s state council, the Bastiaan forces put Senate preselections on hold - openly defying Malcolm Turnbull’s desire to quickly settle on federal candidates. Senator Jane Hume, who holds socially liberal views, is regarded as most under threat and even James Paterson, a rising conservative, has been mentioned as being at risk of a challenge, potentially by Stratov himself (although sources close to the doctor insist he is not yet planning to run for a seat). Senator Jane Hume during the Economics References Committee public hearing into the 2016 Census. Credit:Andrew Meares

Next weekend, Paterson will be the keynote speaker at a Mormon church in Moorabbin to discuss protecting religious freedom. Some Liberals wryly note his new-found interest in Mormonism. He defends his presence - and long interest in the issue - while noting it will be a multi-faith event. ‘’I’d accept any invitation to speak about religious freedom anytime, anywhere,’’ he tells The Sunday Age. Others in the party have been less embracing of the new church faction, with one branch member now facing expulsion for attacking them on social media as ‘’moronic Mormons.’’ It’s the kind of reticence Stratov also once displayed towards religion.

Brought up an atheist, it wasn't until his late teens that he discovered God, after a friend invited him to a Tuesday night church group. He realised that "these people aren't the kooks and the fools that maybe I had been led to believe they were''. “God revealed himself to me,” he said in a 2015 Support Life interview on YouTube, “and I knew it wasn’t some brainwashing.” Now a senior lay Mormon religious leader in the Heidelberg "stake’’, Stratov is smart, quietly spoken and polite, but a closed book to those outside his group, according to senior Liberals who have dealt with him. Senator James Paterson during Question TIme in the Senate. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The 52-year-old declined to be interviewed and is understood to be aggrieved by previous reporting on his views on HIV where he blamed ungodly love for the spread of the disease.

But The Sunday Age has spoken to Liberals who know him well and has combed online video interviews with him where he describes his background and his political awakening. Stratov’s political activism did not emerge until 2008, he says, when the Brumby Labor government sought to decriminalise abortion in Victoria. "We should be preserving life,’’ he told Support Life. "We should be doing things to help women to keep that child.’’ From there, Stratov got involved in the Life movement and the Australian Family Association, and ran as a Family First candidate in 2010 for the state seat of Forest Hill. A few years later, he defected to the Liberals. It’s become a familiar transition.

To a large extent, the demise of micro-parties such as Family First and the Australian Christians have fuelled the Liberals’ grassroots revolution. But the past decade has also seen both a wave of social reform and change, in particular in Victoria, and a continued decline of organised Christianity. Fewer than half of all Victorians identify as Christian as of the 2016 census - a dramatic fall since the 1990s. Nonetheless, the policies of the Andrews Labor government - Safe Schools, voluntary euthanasia, access zones around abortion clinics - have become effective political recruitment tools. Whether they stick around the Liberals is a moot point.

“You often get people join for a reason of a single issue," state president Michael Kroger told gay radio station Joy FM radio last week. "When that issue dies, those people tend to leave. They get very excited and agitated and join you - which is great - but they’re not lifelong members.” Michael Kroger Credit:Justin McManus One of the most prominent new Liberals is Marijke Rancie. She was elected recently as a delegate to the party she joined just two years ago. A Mormon since the age of 20, Rancie has led an incendiary online campaign against Safe Schools, claiming it is trying to "erase gender", expose children to dildos in the classroom, and teach them how to masturbate using household items. Many of her claims have been dismissed as false by the Education Department, but she is unrepentant.

She dismisses suggestions that church members have joined the Liberals solely on social issues. Anti-Safe Schools campaigner and Liberal delegate Marijke Rancie. In an email interview with The Sunday Age, Rancie says she was brought up in a "very strong left leaning Labor home’’ but became a swinging voter once she had children. She was later drawn to the Liberal Party after being involved in her husband’s small business. Safe Schools was “perhaps the final straw”, she says, but other issues - home invasions, health care, religious freedom - are also critical. “When religious freedom has been trampled on, those who are affected want to fight for their values,” Rancie says. “It's as simple as that. Judeo-Christian values have given the West a wonderful backbone for a free society. Extreme activists are attacking the very roots of a culture that has borne much good fruit. It's disheartening to witness.’’

The influence of the new religious right has jarred with other party traditions, such as its support for freedom of speech. In one of its first acts, the new-found power on the administrative committee has been used to pursue a young Liberal from Melbourne’s outer east, James Penny. In early May, a Sunday Age investigation revealed some disturbing practices in the Mormon church, including children as young as 12 being asked by adult male religious figures explicit questions about their sexual thoughts and whether they masturbate. Penny wasn't impressed, writing on Facebook: "We true liberals, the ones aligned with Malcolm Turnbull, and those who believe in what Menzies created, hate these moronic Mormons just as much as everyone else.’’ The administrative committee immediately voted to suspend him and refer an expulsion motion to State Assembly. Sources say Guy - who sits on the committee - made a hasty exit from the room before the vote was taken.

With six months until the Victorian election, some MPs fear the perception of a party shifting further to the right could make it harder for Guy to appeal to voters in Robert Menzies’ “sensible centre”. Guy doesn't think so, telling The Sunday Age: "I've been in the party for 28 years and I've seen many changes to administrative committees. It won't alter any of the sensible policies I put forward." Nonetheless, this year’s Liberal state council agenda was filled with a noticeably large number of contentious motions that sections of the party wanted to debate. One proposal - put forward by a conservative branch linked to federal MP Kevin Andrews - advocated in favour of gay conversion therapy. Another called for “sexual orientation” to be removed from the federal Sex Discrimination Act, which would have allowed for discrimination against LGBTI people. Both were removed from the agenda following a public backlash.

The push has also placed pressure on Kroger who has been blamed by senior Liberals for allowing alleged branch stacking to occur on his watch. Many across the party now see him as a much-diminished president. Asked on radio last week about the rise of the religious right, Kroger insisted the narrative was grossly overstated. “I went to a Christian school. Am I religious? No. Marcus Bastiaan, who’s standing 20 feet from me, has just become a Catholic but he’s not terribly religious, frankly. This is just a total exaggeration.” It’s no exaggeration, however, that the new power bloc wants to sweep out what they view as “dead wood” and re-generate the party with fresh blood. And with more delegates appointed to state council and the Liberals’ governing administrative committee, the right now has more sway than ever before.

Some federal senators are feeling the preselection pressure, and conservative sources would like to reopen state preselections. They admit there is no mechanism to do so, but a number of long-serving MPs - including upper house president Bruce Atkinson, former minister Kim Wells, and western metro MP Bernie Finn - appear to be on a hit list for the future. Stratov and Rancie are being spoken of as future parliamentarians, as is state vice president Karina Okotel, a lawyer who helped lead last year’s “No” campaign against same-sex marriage. Rancie - who insiders say has been earmarked for a future seat in Melbourne’s east - says she’s busy at the moment with her activism and toddler but ‘’I wouldn’t rule it out for the future.’' Stratov has not declared his hand. Meanwhile, the culture war continues, as some fear the party is being captured by hardliners less concerned about broad economic issues such as lower taxes and balanced budgets than they are with socially conservative “single issues”.

“Political parties are meant to be clearing houses for internal trade-offs. But the risk is that these guys don’t want to trade or compromise,” said one senior source. “They want the party to be shaped around their world view.” Do you know more? Contact us securely via Journotips Follow Ben Schneiders on Facebook