‘Grow up’: Greiner warns Liberals will ‘muddle along’ without bold leadership

Former NSW premier Nick Greiner has urged the Liberal Party to “grow up” and warned it will keep “muddling along” unless leaders Sussan Ley and Mark Speakman take bold stands to rebuild the party’s damaged brand.

Liberal Party elder Nick Greiner says the Opposition must "grow up" and take risks on policy or face continued decline, as internal chaos engulfs the NSW branch.

• NSW Lib crisis: Speakman on thin ice

Exclusive: Former NSW premier Nick Greiner says the Liberal Party needs to “grow up”, and warned it would continue to “muddle along” unless Sussan Ley and Mark Speakman “take a stand” on issues to differentiate the party from its rivals.

In a sobering assessment of the crisis facing the party delivered to the NSW Women’s Council this week, Mr Greiner said being “wishy washy” or just playing to the base would lead to the same results as the disastrous federal election.

The comments by the Liberal elder – who has been placed in charge of the party’s NSW management committee – came as the NSW party became engulfed in controversy this week with MP Wendy Tuckerman quitting, two others in a public spat over a preselection and ex-minister Gareth Ward fighting to stay in parliament before also quitting.

Former prime minister Bob Hawke with then NSW premier Nick Greiner in 1990. Picture: Alan Porritt

A source at the meeting told The Daily Telegraph Mr Greiner appeared “incredulous” at times as he spoke of the party’s “hopeless structure” and members trying to join being turned away.

He said the party needed to end the internal fighting and embark on an “open-slather” membership drive if it were to survive, noting no new branches had been established in more than a decade, while at least “300 members in the past five years” had been turned away.

“If there is a Revesby branch and Mrs Smith lives in Revesby, she should be allowed to join,” said Mr Greiner, who was premier from 1988 to 1992.

“Short of being a communist or child molester, she should be able to automatically join the Revesby branch.”

Nick Greiner says the Liberal Party brand is“damaged”. Picture: Richard Dobson

Labelling the party brand “damaged”, Mr Greiner said it was time for its leaders to “take some risks” and agreed with a Women’s Council audience member that the party had allowed the teals to define it by being so strong on issues such as women, energy policy and integrity. The teals were “frankly very good political weaponising” of “a young lady raped in parliament” to question the Liberal Party’s integrity made it “very hard to bring back”.

“We are not helped by the Gareth Ward case or the guy in Pittwater,” he said.

He said the federal and NSW Opposition leaders “do need to take some risks, otherwise we will probably muddle along”.

“You all have different views,” he said. “You won’t have the same views about environment policies and so on.

“At the end of the day, Sussan has got to take a stand because if we are wishy washy or we just frankly go to our natural base to the right, that won’t change our branding.”

While he did not want “a shitfight”, he said the party would be undergoing some key changes, including tackling the “dysfunctional” state executive.

Leader of the federal Opposition Sussan Ley needs to take an active role in changing the Liberal Party branding, Mr Greiner said. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“There are about as many people on state executive as in this room,” he said.

“The party is in a very difficult state. The brand is damaged and it’s damaged particularly with women.

“In my 50 years approximately in the party, the female vote’s gone. It’s not just this election, it is a long-term decline and you can all have views about why that is.

“We don’t have any money, and ties in to the brand damage, not surprisingly. Our vote was pretty much uniformly bad around Australia. The reason we did badly is that people did not like us. They didn’t like our policies, our branding, our positions.That’s the reason we did badly.”

NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman need to join the Liberal leaders and “take a stand”, Mr Greiner said. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

The organisation was starting a “cultural” council to address issues such as the multicultural vote, although declared the “messaging” from the parliamentary party impacted votes such as those from the Chinese community.

“We had chosen to take as a party, as Peter Dutton, as Scott before him, a clearly anti-Chinese position and even though you can understand that and half the world is doing that, in a political sense people who might be on our side instinctively didn’t like some of that rhetoric that we were using,” he said.

The party also needed a membership drive, Mr Greiner said suggesting recruiters be honest with voters and say the party was in the process of rebuilding.

“We should say we are trying to rebuild the party, we understand we’ve let you down,” he said.

“I would like that by the time I leave that the party grow up, stop looking at its naval, at its belly button and get a it of a sense of purpose.

“We’ve done nothing for a long time. We’ve been inwardly focused for a long time.”