Missed deadlines only the start of NSW Liberals’ problems

If the fiasco was an isolated event, it may have been written off as an extraordinarily unfortunate mistake.But the failure came after a number of warning signs which go to the division’s ability to run a federal election campaign.

A Thai restaurant in Newtown seems to be a very odd choice for a Liberal dinner to farewell two of the party’s biggest names from politics.

The MPs cut a strange figure as they dribbled in on Wednesday night, standing out like a sore thumb among the lefty Inner West suburb’s usual occupants.

Things were even more surreal inside, with Greens MP Jenny Leong at one point poking her head in to say hello - after spotting The Daily Telegraph staking out the restaurant in hopes of catching embattled president Don Harwin.

As current and former MPs gathered for a Thai banquet, a civil war in the party over its council nominations catastrophe was deteriorating into an all-out dumpster fire.

More than a week after the party failed to meet electoral commission deadlines to nominate some 140 candidates, things are going from bad to worse for the NSW Liberal Party.

Liberal MP Mark Taylor, Treasury spokesman Damien Tudehop and MP Susan Carter were all in attendance. Picture: MATRIXNEWS

Richard Shields was quickly axed as state director, but the division’s president Don Harwin is holding on for dear life.

A senior frontbencher - Alister Henskens - has even been outed by 2GB Radio host Ray Hadley as the source of private text messages in which leader Mark Speakman was accused of lying and Harwin was labelled a “fraud”.

Hadley read out the destabilising text messages a day after Henskens denied white-anting his leader.

Richard Shields photographed near his home in Vaucluse after being dismissed as the Liberal Party State Director. Photo: Tom Parrish

Henskens was one of the first MPs to arrive at Thai Pathong on Wednesday night. I’m told that he cut a fairly lonely figure in the private dining room.

The debacle over the council nominations has now become a lightning rod for deeply ingrained factional feuds which have long threatened to tear the NSW Liberals apart.

The internecine warfare within the Liberals’ NSW division will ultimately serve only one purpose: keeping the Coalition out of office.

According to some of those present at the dinner, Perrottet accused his colleagues of being “intent on sabotaging yourselves”.

I’m told that the former Premier gave a rousing pep talk to current MPs, while getting stuck in to whoever was airing dirty laundry to the press.

“Unity, discipline, and focus - if you remember those three things you can’t lose,” I’m told he said.

There has been little of those qualities on display of late.

There was certainly no focus or discipline among the organisational wing when party bosses failed to lodge council nominations on time, after endorsements were delayed by months of backroom deals.

Former premier Dominic Perrottet had some tough words for his Liberal colleagues. Picture: David Swift

If the fiasco was an isolated event, it may have been written off as an extraordinarily unfortunate mistake.

But the failure came after a number of warning signs which go to the division’s ability to smoothly run a federal election campaign.

I can reveal that about five days before the Cook by-election, the NSW Liberals had forgotten to submit some 2,500 postal vote applications to the Australian Electoral Commission.

To make it easier for certain voters, parties collect applications for postal votes, which are then passed on to the AEC, which issues postal ballots.

The missing applications were eventually tracked down and submitted, but they only just made the deadline.

The state executive knew about all of it, I’m told.

Some intervention from the federal party now seems inevitable, as the embattled NSW division picks up the pieces.

The federal secretariat cannot intervene until party elder Brian Loughnane hands down findings of a snap inquiry into the council nominations snafu, next month.

For the good of the party, Harwin should bite the bullet and stand aside pending the findings of that inquiry.

Standing aside until Loughnane reports back would be a clean way to cauterise the seeping wound of factional division.

What makes all of this even worse is that the Coalition could have used this week to celebrate the final delivery of a new Metro line which will transform Sydney.

The $21 billion project would not have happened but former Premier Gladys Berejiklian, and Mike Baird before her.

The Metro finally opened under Premier Chris Minns, but Labor cannot take the credit - particularly after spectacularly bungling the opening date.

Perrottet told his old colleagues that the Minns government will spend “the rest of their term cutting ribbons on our projects,” before quipping that if the Liberals win in 2027, there will still be some projects left for the Coalition to open.

The only way the Liberals will be able to govern the state in 2027 is by learning to govern themselves.

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