Former MP Robert Clark retains Victorian Liberal Party presidency

Amid the fallout from the disastrous 2018 state election, Liberal Party state president Robert Clark has retained his position despite a strong challenge at the party’s state council.

Robert Clark (left) with MP Edward O'Donohue and former leader Matthew Guy last year. Picture: Stuart McEvoy/The Australian.

Victorian Liberal president Robert Clark has been re-elected with a clear majority at the party’s annual state council this morning.

Mr Clark faced a strong challenge from Greg Hannan, who had previously taken on former president Michael Kroger, but rallied support from the allies of Mr Kroger and key conservative figure Marcus Bastiaan ahead of today’s vote.

But Mr Clark will remain president after taking over from Mr Kroger in the wake of last year’s state election loss.

The former state MP urged members at today’s state council meeting to support him and focus on what united the party rather than divided it.

It is understood he had also called for an end to the culture of Liberals badmouthing each other.

Mr Hannan had vowed to pursue “a centre-right, positive reform program that modernises the organisational wing and positions us for repeated election victories”.

“We’ll reach out to the community, we’ll represent all especially the quiet Australians and we will win and hold government,” he told Liberal members in his pre-election pitch.

“It’s our party and our future at stake and there is not a moment to waste.”

The party’s leaders delivered a series of reports to members this morning which revealed:

ABOUT 400 new members have signed up to the party since Scott Morrison’s federal election victory — but 2100 existing members had failed to renew their memberships by the end of last month.

THE party will shift its headquarters to 60 Collins St for a year, after selling its long-term home at 104 Exhibition St for $37.1 million, and will continue searching for a permanent home.

THE Victorian Liberals still have more than $3 million in debt, and the poor state election result led to a $1.1 million reduction in expected public funding.

Liberal state director Simon Frost praised the party’s efforts to rally together in the aftermath of last year’s state election defeat and achieve an “absolutely outstanding” result at the May federal election.

But Mr Frost said a poor system of candidate vetting had “returned to haunt us again” as several aspiring MPs were forced to drop out of the race over inappropriate comments posted on social media.

He said the party’s secretariat did not have enough constitutional authority to properly vet candidates, and that a “far more rigorous approach” was needed.

Mr Clark backed “far-reaching changes” to the party’s candidate selection and vetting process.

Mr Frost also called on the party to “have a good hard look” at creating a proper system for handling complaints.

He said the current lack of a proper complaint-handling mechanism was “extremely problematic” and meant the party’s leadership spent “too much bandwidth” dealing with internal gripes.

MORE NEWS: AFL PINCHING CONTROVERSY LATEST

WHY ST KILDA RESIDENTS ARE OVER THE BLOCK

POLICE FEARED CAMP SHOOTING BROTHER MAY DIE

Liberal treasurer John O’Connell said the party’s financial position was “fundamentally strong” but that it needed to ensure the Cormack Foundation became its nominated entity and continued to make major contributions in the face of restrictive new donation laws.

Mr Kroger had taken the foundation to the Federal Court last year after a long-running dispute which was sorted in time for Cormack to contribute millions of dollars to the state and federal election campaigns.

[e-mail]