Sydneysiders urged to join party in former PM’s seat to ‘shift the politics’ and speak up for the environment

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Tony Abbott’s political future could be under threat from a group of activists who have been organising environmentally conscious voters to join Liberal party branches on Sydney’s north shore – a move that could unseat the former prime minister.

Billing themselves as “the counterweight” to the pro-coal power Monash Forum, the North Shore Environmental Stewards have held at least two recruitment functions at which attendees were urged to tap into their networks of environmentally conscious people to join the Liberal party branches in Abbott’s seat of Warringah and on the lower north shore.



The NSES has a Facebook page that says the group “supports clean energy and a healthy environment, and believes in traditional Liberal party values of environmental stewardship”.

• Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

But some participants believe its objectives appeared to be aimed at candidate change.

“I was asked to participate in an initiative to have a representative in Canberra who acknowledges climate change,” said one person who attended the meeting in Seaforth on 25 March.

Exactly who is involved in the group remains a matter of conjecture.



Certainly, Liberals have attended. Several high-profile figures in the moderate faction of the Liberal party, including the powerbroker Michael Photios and his wife, Kristina, attended the lunchtime gathering of the NSES at Seaforth in March.

Also attending were the New South Wales MP for North Shore, Felicity Wilson, and David Begg, a longtime Liberal party member who ran against Abbott for preselection in the 1990s.



Photios addressed the meeting and, according to one attendee, put the case that the Liberals were the party that would tackle climate change – and that they should join. He highlighted his own record of defending the environment when in state parliament. .

Tony Abbott says climate change is 'probably doing good' Read more

“At the meeting I soon realised that the NSES was ... seeking to recruit people concerned about the lack of action on climate change to join the Liberal party in order to block the preselection of Tony Abbott to stand in Warringah at the next federal election,” the attendee claimed.



One invitation for the Mosman meeting said: “We have a real opportunity be a force for good in the party, a voice for the environment right here in the electorate of the Monash Forum’s figurehead – Tony Abbott. Come and learn about how we can shift the politics here in Warringah at our info session this Sunday!”

Photios told Guardian Australia he had attended the Seaforth meeting because his wife, a passionate environmentalist, had been asked to speak. She ultimately didn’t speak but Photios did and was the main speaker at the event.

He said there was “zero involvement” of the Liberal party or the moderate faction in the formation of the NSES.



Kristina Photios quit the Liberal party in 2016 because she was appalled by its stance on climate change but has since rejoined.

A year ago, the Photios couple formed a spinoff from Photios’s lobbying firm, Premier State, to represent clean energy companies. The firm, Clean Energy Strategies, describes itself as “a boutique corporate advisory firm specialising in energy”.

Until a few years ago Photios held several senior positions in the state executive of the NSW Liberal party and was head of the moderate faction, known as the Group, which has been locked in a long-running power struggle with the right. Abbott is one of the leading members of the right faction.

As prime minister, Abbott pushed through rule changes in the Liberal party to ban registered lobbyists from holding party positions.

Several members of NSES are also members of the activist group GetUp. A GetUp spokeswoman said the NSES “was definitely not a GetUp project but the environmental justice team knows of it ... and think they’re great”.



The official organiser of NSES, Rob Grant, told Guardian Australia the group was no more than “a group of like-minded people on the north shore who want to see action on climate change, and who believe in driving change from inside the tent”.

NSW Liberals reject Tony Abbott-backed plan for preselections Read more

Grant, a businessman who had a company in the renewables sector, is also a member of the Liberal party’s Neutral Bay branch.

Senior figures in the moderates scoffed at the idea that Abbott was in any danger of losing his northern beaches seat in a preselection. They said he had a firm grip on the numbers and that to take part in a preselection members must have joined at least six months earlier.

There is no firm date for federal preselections but they are likely to take place by the end of the year or earlier, if an early election is called.

But figures closer to the machinations in Warringah warned the seat could be vulnerable to an attack by Young Liberals, whom they described as marauding across NSW.

This is because the geographic rules that require members to join their local federal branch do not apply for members under the age of 30. Young Liberals can therefore vote in preselections outside where they live.

Tony Abbott declined to comment.