The new test of leadership headed Morrison’s way

While the parliamentary Liberal Party is pretty much united behind the Prime Minister, the Liberal Party at large is still divided, writes Peta Credlin. Juggling factions will be Scott Morrison’s next big test.

The trouble with being the leader is that there’s always more to do.

Just when Scott Morrison might have been inclined to deservedly savour the passage of his tax cuts through the Senate, on top of winning the unwinnable election that will forever make him a Liberal hero, there’s a new test of leadership headed his way.

While the parliamentary Liberal Party is pretty much united behind the Prime Minister, the Liberal Party at large is still divided between the “small-l” Liberal moderates and the “big-L” Liberal conservatives.

Because the moderates have always been a minority among the basically conservative Liberal rank-and-file, they’ve needed to be better organised in order to keep their foothold in the parliamentary party, and in the party machine.

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At the preselection last year, Senator Jim Molan was widely expected to win the No.1 spot on the NSW Coalition Senate ticket. Before becoming a senator, retired major-general Molan was Australia’s most accomplished military commander since Peter Cosgrove.

Post-army, he provided the expertise to the Abbott government’s Operation Sovereign Borders plan, which stopped the boats.

Australian Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. Picture: Lukas Coch/AAP

That alone should put the Coalition forever in his debt (and the PM too, who was immigration minister at the time).

As a senator, he’d already made a strong contribution to defence policy, and continued his work for “one-member, one-vote” reforms inside the party. As the only sitting senator up for re-election, he should have been a shoo-in for the top spot.

Perhaps this lulled him into a false sense of security.

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In any event, the Liberal Party factions quickly got to work and put Hollie Hughes (who is a reliable factional timeserver but otherwise underwhelming) and Andrew Bragg (like his surname suggests, a bloke who likes to put it out on social media) in the number one and two spots, leaving Molan in the unwinnable fourth spot on the Coalition joint ticket, after the National Party.

After being done over, Molan did what he was perfectly entitled to do.

He barnstormed the state arguing it was vital to re-elect the Morrison government but that if you wanted to keep him in the Senate, you could vote below the line for him and then vote for the rest of the Liberal-National ticket.

There were more than enough Liberal Party members and supporters who were unhappy with the factional stranglehold on preselections to help out on polling booths; and there were more than enough voters disillusioned with the party machine to give this high-achieving Australian, who had been passed over for two relatively undistinguished factional hacks, the biggest personal vote ever achieved in an Australian election.

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Molan got 137,000 below-the-line votes, compared to just 28,000 for Hughes and 2500 for Bragg, who were elected via above-the-line party votes. That gives him an overwhelming moral claim on the Senate vacancy coming up when Senator Arthur Sinodinos takes up his new job as our US ambassador.

Liberal Senator Jim Molan has seriously fired up the party members and supporters. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

And herein lies the problem that, inevitably, the Prime Minister will have to manage. Molan has seriously annoyed the factional heavies, who just want Liberal voters to do what the party tells them.

But he’s seriously fired up the party members and supporters, who think the Liberal Party should choose the most qualified person for the job rather than those who have most effectively sold themselves to the factional string-pullers. These are the people most inclined to join branches and hand out for the party on polling day but who often don’t have the time (or patience) for power plays.

These are the people who could easily have voted for One Nation or elsewhere but decided that the Liberals, under Morrison, had sufficiently returned to their roots to be worth another chance.

If Molan has to face a standard preselection, once again, it’s likely that party insiders will try to dud the party’s base.

But only weeks after a general election where numbers one, two and three on the Senate ticket were elected (and have now been sworn in), surely it’s not too hard to deliver an outcome where number four takes the immediate vacancy and the Prime Minister gives voice to the 137,000 ‘‘quiet Australians” who stood with Molan, just like they stood with him?

Anything else would only reopen the wounds that May 18 has started to heal.
Peta Credlin is a News Corp Australia columnist and Sky News presenter.