Dave Sharma’s shock preselection win secures Liberal Senate spot

Former Wentworth MP Dave Sharma has secured a shock preselection victory to enter the Senate after coming out on top of a hotly contested Liberal Party preselection race.

A firm outsider after his own moderate faction threw its support behind the former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance, Sharma emerged from Sunday’s preselection ballot victorious after an hours-long process which included a delay after the technology used to run the vote crashed as pre-selectors tried to cast their ballots.

Dave Sharma after securing preselection victory for the Liberal Senate spot left vacant by the retirement of Marise Payne. Credit: Anna Kucera

In the end, Sharma will enter the Senate focused on using his background as a diplomat and foreign ambassador to “fight for our nation’s national security interests in a time of greater global turmoil” after he defeated Constance by 295 to 206 in the final round of voting

About 500 delegates turned up to Sydney’s Fullerton Hotel on Sunday for the vote to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of former foreign affairs minister and moderate powerbroker Marise Payne.

Despite Sharma being from the same faction, the result is a shock for the moderate powerbase, and is a devastating blow for Constance’s federal political ambitions. It comes just six months after he was defeated by former Liberal Party state president Maria Kovacic to fill the spot left following the death of former senator Jim Molan.

The race to fill Payne’s Senate spot set off a complicated factional tangle which saw nine candidates vying to win the seat. The list included a string of high-profile Liberals, including former ACT senator Zed Seselja, Sharma and Constance.

Defeated: Former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance.Credit: Janie Barrett

Seselja enjoyed the support of the party’s hard right and won endorsement from federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, while Constance was formally backed by the bulk of the dominant moderate faction, including Payne and powerbroker Michael Photios.

But senior Liberal Party sources said after the vote that Constance’s loss had come after right faction preferences flowed Sharma’s way. A former diplomat, Sharma had also impressed during his speech to the delegates on the day, which focused on foreign policy including the conflict in Gaza. His campaign, which was run by former NSW Young Liberal president Harry Stutchbury, was also seen as appealing to a younger generation of moderate voters within the party.

In a statement following his selection Sharma thanked party members for the “opportunity to hold the Albanese government to account in the Senate over its many missteps and wrong decisions, and to fight for the many households across NSW struggling to deal with Labor’s cost of living crisis”.

“I believe strongly in the need to safeguard Australia’s future for our children, and so I have always been drawn to public service. The opportunity to serve in the Senate will allow me to fight for our nation’s national security interests in a time of greater global turmoil,” he said.

The Liberal Party Senate vote works on a preferential system. After each round, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. Despite Constance leading for the majority of the vote, he was overtaken after Seselja was eliminated in the seventh round of voting. Those ballots favoured Sharma 36 to 21, giving him enough to take the lead.

Seselja’s defeat is a blow for the party’s conservative faction after he was heavily backed by Dutton, as well as Tony Abbott and current Liberal frontbenchers Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor.

A former minister for the pacific under Scott Morrison, Seselja’s nomination ruffled some feathers within the NSW division of the party after he previously served as leader of the opposition in the ACT and as a senator from the Territory.

Despite being “shocked” by the result, senior NSW moderate sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential vote, said it was the second preselection in a row in which moderates had “won the gold and the silver”.

“It just shows how out of sorts the right are,” the sources said. “They can’t even come second.”

After the vote, Deputy Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley released a statement hailing Sharma as a fitting replacement for Payne due to his foreign policy background, and said he would help the Liberals win back seats lost to Teal independents during the last federal election.

“Dave is someone who very much appeals to that cohort of voters which we need to win in 2025,” she said.

Sharma is likely to take up his spot in weeks, after it is confirmed by a vote in the NSW Parliament to take place this week.

Despite enjoying the backing of the right, the vote for Seselja was complicated by support for former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s one-time chief policy advisor, Monica Tudehope.

Tudehope, the daughter of former NSW finance minister and upper house MP Damien Tudehope, was supported by Perrottet, who released a video in the lead-up to the vote calling her the party’s “future”, and his former chief of staff turned Business Council of Australia chief Bran Black.

Her candidacy also won support from some sections of the party’s moderates, including the group Hilma’s Network, which seeks to promote more female MPs in the Liberal Party’s ranks, meaning the final result remained uncertain as preselectors began voting on Sunday afternoon.

The crowded field included former RSL NSW president James Brown, and lesser-known candidates including the Lowy Institute researcher Jess Collins, barrister Ishita Sethi, lawyer Pallavi Sinha and solicitor Nim Rutnam.

It made for a long afternoon in which candidates pitched themselves to delegates before a question and answer session, followed by a preferential vote, which was delayed when the online server used to conduct the ballot crashed.

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