Queensland Liberal National party moderates have warned of a “rum rebellion” if the party’s state council meeting in Bundaberg this weekend takes action against three MPs who voted for abortion rights.

Three state MPs from Brisbane and the Gold Coast – Tim Nicholls, Steve Minnikin and Jann Stuckey – could be disendorsed for supporting a bill to decriminalise abortion last month.

Several branches and the Young LNP have backed motions to block the moderate trio from seeking preselection.

The meeting is considered by many to be a test of whether the party, the result of a merger between the Queensland Liberal and National parties, can maturely manage its “broad church” of ideologies and regional interests.

It will also test the authority of the Queensland opposition leader, Deb Frecklington, and her deputy, Tim Mander. Both supported a conscience vote on abortion law reform, though both voted against the government’s proposals. They have subsequently argued that MPs who crossed the floor should not be punished.

Guardian Australia understands that talks have been held to find a face-saving compromise. The Courier-Mail reported that one option under discussion was that the moderate trio could be censured by the state council for voting against formal party policy, but not disendorsed.

Moderates say they are nervous about whether any such deal can be struck, given the growing influence of hardliners and those who believe that the party’s priority should be to win back rightwing supporters lost to One Nation and Katter’s Australia party. That nervousness increased on Wednesday when Jason Costigan, the MP for Whitsunday, took to the floor of state parliament to rebuke his own party.

Costigan, a former rugby league commentator, said it was “dead-set embarrassing” that the LNP held only two seats north of Bundaberg and that “we only have ourselves to blame”.

“The problem in central, north and far north Queensland is that pen pushers and pollies in Brisbane, more than 1,100km from my little office, are making decisions about people and places they know very little about,” Costigan said.



He called for the reinstatement of two expelled party members who had criticised last year’s LNP state election campaign; the former Howard government minister Peter Lindsay and the Richmond mayor, John Wharton. He also thanked the former One Nation figures Harry Black and Bill Feldman for backing his election campaign.

It is not the first time Costigan has made such comments but the timing of his latest salvo has heightened temperatures in the lead-up to the state council meeting.

“We’re trying to make the argument the LNP needs to have room for liberals,” one moderate party member told Guardian Australia. “The problem we’ve been up against is this hellbent attitude of chasing back One Nation and Katter voters in the regions and no thought to what that does to our stocks in the south-east.

“[The state council] needs to find a way through it, otherwise they’ll have a rum rebellion on their hands in Bundaberg.”

Since the merger, the LNP has had to balance competing regional interests alongside competing ideologies, which increasingly divide the membership.

In Queensland, voter priorities can differ markedly from one town to the next. The LNP’s federal MPs include George Christensen, a hardline social conservative who crossed the floor to oppose penalty rate cuts, and Warren Entsch, who campaigned strongly for marriage equality.



Entsch told Guardian Australia last month that any move to disendorse Nicholls, Minnikin or Stuckey would “light the fuse” for party demerger talks.

It is understood the trio retain the support of their local branches and several others in the south-east. But some conservative city branches, such as Pine Rivers in Peter Dutton’s federal electorate of Dickson, are backing the disendorsement motion.

Frecklington told Guardian Australia the LNP team represented “the broad backgrounds and traditions of our membership”.

“The LNP is a grassroots, democratic party that brings people together from all across Queensland,” she said. “The LNP is representative of members from across this state, which means it’s the only party that can govern for all of Queensland.”

A moderate former party official said: “They say over and over, the LNP is a broad church. And that’s the point, isn’t it? A narrow-minded party is also an unelectable party in this state.

“They can’t ask for the support of liberals, give them the freedom to vote with their conscience, then kick them out. It’s just madness.”