NSW Liberal leader at war with Dutton-led takeover

Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s takeover of the NSW Liberal Party is under threat from a rearguard action by state leader Mark Speakman and moderate powerbrokers who fear right-wingers will use the move to retain power after the party’s local council registration disaster.

Conservative Liberal officials sent an incendiary letter to party members on Wednesday, claiming Speakman “issued a blatant challenge to the leadership of Peter Dutton” in a fiery meeting on Tuesday night, heightening tensions over the intervention that threatens to split the party.

Mark Speakman (left) is trying to have NSW figures installed on a committee empowered by Peter Dutton to run the NSW division.Credit: Kate Geraghty, Alex Ellinghausen

It was triggered by the state branch’s failure last month to register 140 candidates for local council elections but has become a flashpoint in the conflict between the state’s moderates and a conservative faction led by figures such as shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and former prime minister Tony Abbott.

The letter is also an attempt by conservatives to avoid moderates gridlocking the committee charged with running the state party ahead of the federal election by appointing two more members.

Speakman’s moderates nominated former MPs Fiona Scott and Peta Seaton to the committee that the Liberals’ federal executive has appointed to run the state branch of the party. It already has two conservative Victorian members on it, former senator Richard Alston, 82, and ex-state treasurer Alan Stockdale, 79. Moderate former NSW state MP Rob Stokes declined to participate.

Dutton and other federal executive members will meet on Friday morning to decide on NSW’s request to add members, which represents a de facto vote on whether NSW moderate members have a say over the division’s affairs or whether full power will remain with the Victorians.

Former federal Liberal Party president and one-time minister Richard Alston in June 2016.Credit: Christopher Pearce

Adding two new members would turn it into an even-numbered committee, leading to likely “gridlock and more disfunction [sic]“, according to the email.

Taylor and other right faction members vigorously opposed the addition of members at the meeting, according to sources who spoke anonymously to comply with party rules.

Federal president John Olsen wrote to Speakman on Tuesday, in another communication seen by this masthead, saying he had “no objection personally” to Seaton being on the committee but insisted it should remain a “three-person committee”. Olsen also said he did not think a member of the federal executive should be on the committee, which would preclude Scott.

Speakman teed off on the Victorians in a state executive meeting on Tuesday, according to the leaked email, calling them “elderly” and “outsiders” in a manner the conservatives called “rather sad, and a poor reflection on Mr Speakman”.

“I refuse to accept that a committee dominated by two elderly men from Victoria represents a meritorious outcome,” Speakman said.

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