Anna Caldwell: Liberals need to start planning now to fend off the teals

Finding the right candidate for the safe seat of Vaucluse should be a top priority for the Liberals if they wants to stave off challenges from independents next year, writes Anna Caldwell.

Once upon a time, the resignation of a sitting MP in a well-heeled seat like Vaucluse would have been nothing more than a career opportunity for a hand-picked party loyalist who had served their time and impressed the right people.

With a margin of 19.3 per cent, it’s the sort of electorate that has long been set and forget – a blue jewel in the crown.

Taking in wealthy suburbs like Darling Point, Bellevue Hill and Vaucluse, the seat has never been held by a party other than the conservatives.

But 2022 is a new beast and the teal wave of the federal election has turned history on its head.

A seat like Vaucluse, a place where incomes can afford to worry about gender representation in parliament and climate change, has become a flashpoint for what the modern Liberal party stands for.

The Liberal party must preselect teal-buster candidates that can take the fight to independents in seats like Vaucluse. Picture: Terry Pontikos

The resignation of Gabrielle Upton has presented the party with its first big test post-federal election — a test of precisely how it will handle the teal threat after a string of smart independent women ousted Libs in moderate-leaning federal seats.

In fact, Vaucluse voters have seen this movie before — and the Libs didn’t like the ending.

The federal seat of Wentworth, which overlaps the state seat of Vaucluse, saw local Allegra Spender romp to victory over rising Liberal star Dave Sharma.

A foot wrong and Vaucluse will go the same way.

The teals are already circling at a state level. The warning signs are there.

The February by-election to replace Gladys Berejiklian in Willoughby should have been a walk in the park for the Libs. Spoiler, it was not.

Independent Larissa Penn forced a 19 per cent swing away from the Libs and seriously rattled their cage.

Tim James limped across the line, with most of Berejiklian’s healthy margin erased.

All this and Penn’s campaign was nothing by comparison to the sophisticated show run by the teals in the federal election.

Premier Dominic Perrottet and Treasurer Matt Kean appeal to different voter bases. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Adam Yip

Meanwhile, North Sydney independent group, who helped propel Kylea Tink into the federal seat, will host a launch event later this month, having identified the state seats of Lane Cove, North Shore and Willoughby as targets.

The rise of the independents in wealthy seats reflects a dissatisfaction with the Liberal Party over its treatment of women and the way it spent years tying itself in knots on climate.

New Liberal deputy leader Sussan Ley conceded in May that women had abandoned the party, with former frontbencher Karen Andrews agreeing.

“A particular cohort of women … don’t believe that the Liberal Party listens to them, hears what they have to say and finally does not represent their views,” she told Sky News after the election.

Gabrielle Upton will vacate her seat at the next election.

Behind the scenes Perrottet and his Treasurer Matt Kean — also the leader of the NSW moderates — have hatched a plan which they believe insulates the state from the same mistakes.

Kean, a social progressive, will be responsible for managing the mood in these teal-risk seats.

Perrottet will man the suburbs where his brand of politics carries more appeal than that of Kean.

Together, the pair have worked hard to build up a suite of policies that support women and back climate change, identifying a clear deficit at a federal level.

The June budget, a Kean-Perrottet double act, was specifically designed with one voter in mind — women with young families.

Senior NSW Liberals remain quietly confident in the plan but acknowledge the threat remains.

This double act is a solution to the ideological debate that raged in the days following the federal election drubbing over which direction the party should drag itself.

To the left to try to take back teal territory or to the right accepting that those disaffected moderate voters are lost forever.

But in a seat like Vaucluse, if you abandon the blue-green moderate voters, you abandon the seat. The ideological challenge is that the long-term strategy of the party lies more firmly in the suburbs and the regions than it does in wealthy inner-city areas.

But the type of candidate who will win in the suburbs, where issues like cost of living and tolls rule, quite simply won’t win in Vaucluse where voters are deeply invested in issues like gender equality and climate action.

Critically, these things need not be exclusive.

The Liberals will not retain or win back power in NSW if they can’t incorporate a range of views into their platform. The party is at its best when — in the words of John Howard — it is operating effectively as a broad church.

If Perrottet and Kean can nail their double act they’ll be in a stronger position than if they fail.

Perrottet will head into the election the underdog. He already is without a majority in the lower house.

He will need to fight tooth and nail to hang on to suburban seats like Penrith and East Hills, not be waylaid by contests in the inner city.

At the 2019 election, internal polling revealed how Berejiklian methodically turned around a generation of working mums through the course of the campaign to vote for her and sweep her to power. Perrottet will need to do this again, in the suburbs and in the city, if he hopes to hold power. This starts with picking the right candidate in Vaucluse.

Perrottet is encouraged by the field of candidates already in the mix.

Women like Susan Wynne, Daisy Turnbull and Kellie Sloane are seen by Perrottet as strong options and he is encouraged by the high quality field of women. But whoever wins preselection is going to have to be game for a fight. Because the independents will bring it.