The Sauce: Don’s vice-presidents call for a vote on his future

Two senior Liberal Party officials are calling for president Don Harwin to stand aside pending an inquiry into the council nominations fiasco. The Sauce has all the details.

Two senior Liberal Party officials are seeking to put a motion to the party for president Don Harwin to stand aside pending an inquiry by an “external” investigator into the council nominations fiasco.

The party has declared it will review the debacle, but many members believe such an inquiry needs to occur independently, with some suggesting it should be overseen at a federal level.

In an email sent to members on Saturday, party vice-presidents Geoff Pearson and Peter O’Hanlon said it was only commonsense for Mr Harwin to stand aside while such an inquiry took place.

“Normally, in such a catastrophic failure of a fundamental purpose of the organisation (the

only way these events can be described) accepted standards of good governance would

have seen the chair and the CEO both resign,” the email said.

“Don Harwin simply cannot say ‘that he had nothing to do with it’.

Senior Liberal Party officials are pushing for Don Harwin to stand aside pending an inquiry into the council nominations disaster. Cartoon: Warren Brown

“An essential ability of a board member or chair are the skills to mentor and guide the CEO in a way that is positive for the organisation and to ensure that its fundamental objectives are

achieved.

“Clearly these duties and obligations have not been met as evidenced by the events earlier this week.”

There are calls to force Don Harwin to stand aside pending an inquiry into the Liberal Party’s council nominations fiasco. Picture: Jenny Evans

It is understood the pair are pushing for an emergency meeting of the state executive to enable a vote to occur on the motion

The move comes as furious party members belonging to branches on the North Shore joined with their Northern Beaches counterparts in demanding the moderate powerbroker resign.

Mr Harwin on Friday fired off a letter to the NSW Electoral Commission, requesting a seven-day extension for the forms of 140 council candidates to be lodged after missing the Wednesday noon deadline.

That request has been denied.

The letter is understood to also outline issues the party had with the process, which it claims contributed to the failure of candidate form lodgement.

Such is the backlash from the fiasco that party elders have been reaching out to staff and members to check on their wellbeing.

In their email, Mr Pearson and Mr O’Hanlon said both staff and members had been “severely impacted” by the extraordinary breakdown in organisational process.

STALIN STYLE

There are dangers going off script.

Just ask Opposition Whip Chris Rath who was on such a roll delivering a private member’s statement about conservative Canadian politician Pierre Poilievre that he forgot others might be listening.

The Liberal MP began by saying how dispiriting it had been for “classic Liberals” and “small government conservatives” to “ not be led by the same type of principled and determined global figures such as Thatcher and Reagan.

He went on to say how he had high hopes for Poilievre — who is Canada’s conservative Opposition Leader — before somehow thinking it was good idea to start attacking his own party.

Canadian Conservative Party’s newly elected leader Pierre Poilievre with his wife Anaida. Picture: AFP

“We certainly should not be looking to Donald Trump,” he said.

“Nor, unfortunately, can we draw any policy nourishment from the Stalinist-style market intervention in the energy and supermarket sectors proposed by the Federal Coalition.”

Say what?

It wasn’t long before 2GB’s Ben Fordham was launching in to Rath, accusing him of “launching an attack on federal leader Peter Dutton:.

Before long, Rath was getting the call up from his boss with state Opposition Leader Mark Speakman - who we think already had enough on his plate with the council debacle (see above) - asking him to please explain.

Speako told The Sauce that he regularly reminded his team “both collectively and individually” on the importance of staying united and on task.

“At the national level we need Peter Dutton as our prime minister to lead us out of Australia’s malaise.” he said.

It is understood Rath told “Speako” that it had been a throwaway line and had not meant to be taken as an attack on Dutton.

YOU ASKED

A NSW MP’s cake order didn't quite go to plan.

There are memes about this.

When a staffer from the office of Police Minister Yasmin Catley popped into the local cake shop this week to buy one for Labor colleague and Blue Mountains MP Trish Doyle, the young attendant asked if a message needed to be inscribed on it.

“Just write happy birthday,” Catley’s staffer instructed.

And so they did.

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