Revealed: The secret timetable that could have stopped the NSW Liberals’ council fiasco

NSW Liberal Party president Jason Falinski was fed up.

His efforts to pass a suite of amendments to reform the party’s constitution, streamlining the vetting and endorsement of candidates, were facing dogged resistance. The former Mackellar MP fired off an email to Liberal Party delegates on Valentine’s Day, furious with a recalcitrant element of the hard right.

Former federal MP Jason Falinski tried to reform the Liberal Party’s constitution to ensure candidates were nominated on time for local government elections.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“Without these much-needed reforms, the Division will not be able to run many candidates at the 2024 local government elections,” he wrote.

Little did he know how prescient his warning would be.

Six months later, the NSW Liberal Party would become engulfed in one of the greatest fiascos in the division’s 79-year history, failing to lodge the nomination forms for 140 candidates across 16 council areas by the NSW Electoral Commission’s August 14 deadline.

Less than 48 hours after the fiasco became apparent, state director Richard Shields was terminated.

Conservatives have since turned their sights on Falinski’s replacement, former NSW minister and moderate Don Harwin, saying as the effective chair of the division he is equally culpable.

Previously unseen documents and correspondence show the behind-the-scenes effort to streamline processes to vet and preselect candidates, and how a lack of trust between the party’s two wings knee-capped the push.

One pillar of the reforms was designed to expedite “urgently needed changes to streamline cumbersome processes” which “were desperately needed” for local government preselections, and remedy administrative burdens in setting selection timelines, Falinski wrote.

This included expediting vetting processes to ensure individual, in-person meetings didn’t have to be undertaken with each of the roughly 450 Liberal candidates vying for selection.

NSW Liberal Party president Don Harwin and sacked state director Richard Shields.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

The reforms needed to be passed by a majority of members on the party’s constitutional standing committee (CSC). So the four conservative members decided not to turn up, denying the meeting a quorum.

“While the State Executive reform package was unanimously approved by the CSC members present, the package could not be validly approved,” Falinski wrote on February 14.

“This means it cannot be considered by State Council at the AGM, and will now be removed from the Agenda. I’m sure that you share my view, that this is a deeply disappointing outcome.”

One of these timetables, put forward by a conservative state executive member in September, proposed ensuring candidates in 19 local government areas were vetted and endorsed by April 7 this year, four months before the August deadline. It was knocked back by headquarters.

A second timetable for 31 local government areas was presented to Shields and senior Liberals executives by the local government oversight committee in mid-December last year. Under the proposed timeline, candidates would have been endorsed by June 24, at the latest.

It was reliant on Falinksi’s reforms, according to senior Liberal sources. Concerns over the party’s ability to undertake the preselections without the changes are laid out in internal emails obtained by this masthead, which also outline concerns about the revised schedule put forward by Shields.

“These have been selected as the ones to start with for strategic reasons, as well due to the size of the conference and ensuring that the staff have the ability to manage the selection processes document from the 2021 local government elections regarding winnable positions,” Shields wrote.

Instead, the party lost three months as the factions scrapped over a compromise over minor amendments to the reforms, eventually passing them in May. A month later, as the September election date loomed, anxiety grew among state executive members over the lack of endorsements and preselections.

“We could’ve started the process in February or even last year, but the hard right’s obstinance resulted in delays,” one Liberal source said.

“It was a ‘my way or the highway’ approach, typical of the hard right, who put their factional self-interest above the party’s electoral success.”

Members of the hard right, who spoke anonymously citing rules forbidding party members from speaking publicly, said Falinski’s reforms were simply a Trojan horse to consolidate moderate’s power in the division.

One source said they had been handed the 59-page document with 36 hours notice before the first meeting on January 25. Emails seen by the Herald show the notice for the meeting was sent out eight days prior.

Senior Liberal sources said even the best-laid plans could not have prevented the crisis. With the Electoral Commission releasing the election forms on August 5, the party had nine days to complete them before the August 14 deadline. That did not occur.

One source said the decision by Liberal headquarters to take responsibility for lodging all forms for the first time meant the party simply had no idea of the enormity of the task. The workload was compounded by a lack of correspondence dictating when documentation needed to be submitted to party office. On deadline day, the party was still receiving forms.

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