news, latest-news

With a Federal election due next year, or possibly even earlier, parties are scrambling to get their candidates in place, and there is good reason for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to be wary of the pre-selection season now under way. Liberal leaders in particular are vulnerable with their authority on the line. Labor, by contrast, has internal mechanisms that take the heat off the leader. The stock reply to a question about Liberal Party pre-selection matters is that it is a party matter, not one for the leader. But the fact remains that a leader’s powers of moral suasion can be sorely tested by local pre-selection battles. The Liberal Party patriarch, Sir Robert Menzies, prime minister from 1949 to 1966, was not normally one to intervene in local party matters, but should he find matters not to his liking, a quick phone call, or even just a raising of those prominent eyebrows, would generally result in an outcome to his liking, such was his authority within the party he helped found. John Howard, in his first incarnation as Liberal leader in the 1980s, learned the hard way. The Liberal Party, then as now, was in insurrectionary mood, and the hard right (the dries) was making its presence felt, stalking the moderates (wets). Howard, very much in tune with the dries, stood back and did nothing while a prominent moderate in Victoria, Ian Macphee, a former senior minister in the Fraser government, was put to the sword. Howard, already in trouble over his remarks on Asian immigration and his failure in the 1987 election, simply by his inaction alienated his remaining support among the moderates, and within a week he was gone, replaced by Andrew Peacock. Fast forward to John Howard as prime minister, and we find a leader keenly aware of the explosive potential of contentious pre-selections. When a leading moderate, Marise Paine, now Defence Minister, was threatened by the right with demotion on the NSW Senate ticket, Howard, no political friend, intervened to protect her. What it did was underscore Howard’s authority. John Hewson, as Liberal leader in the early 1990s, was faced with a major problem when the Liberal Party in NSW went against his advice and decided to stand candidates against sitting Nationals in state elections. Inevitably, it spilled over into the federal arena, immediately posing a threat to one of Hewson’s most experienced and capable frontbenchers, Wal Fife. A redistribution in 1992 had altered the boundaries of his rural seat of Hume, along with those of two neighbouring electorates held by the Nationals. Attempts were made to avoid a damaging row with the Nationals and a situation in which Fife would be forced to run against fellow Coalition frontbencher, John Sharp. Hewson fought doggedly to save Fife, but in the end no compromise could be found, and Fife decided to retire. Media speculation was that Hewson had walked away from a fight, but the reality was that he had fought hard and lost. Both the perception and the reality hurt Hewson, who was dumped after the 1993 election. Malcolm Turnbull knows full well the pitfalls of becoming embroiled in party pre-selection disputes. In his first stint as Liberal leader, he sought to help Peter Dutton win pre-selection for a safer seat in Queensland, but was unceremoniously rebuffed by the local party organisation. It might have won him Dutton’s loyalty, but it cost him dearly in terms of his apparent influence in the wider party. Now, with the controversial dumping of Assistant Minister, Jane Prentice, in the safe Brisbane seat of Ryan, Turnbull, for all his apparent championing of women, has decided to sit on his hands. He praised Prentice’s performance as an assistant minister but ruled out intervening on her behalf. It is bad for him for several reasons. For starters, the Coalition has a gender problem. Of the 24 ministers in cabinet, women hold just five places, while only one out of six outer ministry positions is held by a woman. In the cohort of 12 assistant ministers, Prentice is one of just four women. Prentice has held Ryan, in Brisbane’s western suburbs, since 2010 after a decade serving on the Brisbane City Council. A week ago, her former staffer, and current Brisbane councillor, Julian Simmonds, was chosen to replace her, winning the vote 256 to 103 – the biggest pre-selection vote in Brisbane’s history. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who attended the pre-selection ballot as the prime minister’s representative, was curiously effusive in his praise of Simmonds, lauding him as “an energetic person…somebody who’s demonstrated his capacity to deliver for local residents in the western suburbs.” The abnormally high turnout of voters is interesting, suggesting there has been a serious recruitment drive in Brisbane, where the Coalition parties are a single entity, the Liberal National Party. The LNP was never happy about the dumping of Tony Abbott in 2015, and has been in a morose mood since failing to dislodge Labor in the state election last year Jane Prentice, who was sufficiently regarded by the Prime Minister to be promoted to Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services after the 2016 election, is considered to be a moderate (a minority in Queensland) and a Turnbull supporter in the party room coup against Abbott. This might well be a case of belated retribution in a party that is showing increasing signs of insurrectionary behaviour. In Victoria, several pre-selections have been put on hold as the religious right starts to make its growing presence felt in Liberal Party forums. In South Australia, meanwhile, reports suggest Senator Lucy Gishuhi, the Kenyan-born former Independent who defected to the Liberal Party in February, will be placed in the unwinnable fourth position on the Liberal Senate ticket. When her defection gave the Government a much-needed extra vote in the Senate, Malcolm Turnbull described her as an “inspiration” and a “true Australian success story.” But she looks likely to make way on the ticket for Adelaide City Councillor Alex Antic. Again, an impotent silence from the Prime Minister, and twin blows against the Coalition on both the gender and diversity fronts. There are many ominous signs here for a Prime Minister still trailing in the polls. The repercussions from his ousting of Abbott continue to resonate almost three years on, no matter how compelling the case against Abbott, arguably the most inept prime minister of all. A perception of Turnbull’s limited authority within the party makes it easier for his opponents to continue to undermine him. And with a slew of important pre-selection battles still ahead, Malcolm Turnbull will be keenly aware, if history is a guide, that both inaction and failed action pose potential formidable threats to his leadership, even in the shadows of the looming election Dr Norman Abjorensen, of the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, is the author of three books on the Liberal Party and its leaders.

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/887a0ff4-6a3e-4a6a-9826-2a1c88016143/r0_67_1024_646_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg