By Nick Bonyhady and Stephen Brook
Attendees at the Roseville branch of the Liberal Party’s next Northern Sydney Conservative Forum have got an upgrade.
Previously your columnists brought you news that the good burghers were set to hear from climate sceptic Ian Plimer, visiting fellow traveller Benny Peiser and Sky After Dark host Rowan Dean for a scintillating discussion of the “energy crisis”.
Eric Abetz and Brian Marlowe.Credit: John Shakespeare
But branch president George Szabo has thrown in a freebie. Guests at the charming Roseville Golf Club later this month will also be treated to remarks from hard right activist Matthew Camenzuli, there to speak about his (thus far unsuccessful) legal challenge to the selection of Liberal candidates by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and former federal party president Christine McDiven.
Alas, even that wasn’t enough to lure another political heavy hitter to attend.
Labor frontbencher Kristina Keneally has inexplicably found herself on the invite list – again.
This is the second rogue invite and comes after this very column pointed out this very same error on the invite list one year ago. Crushingly, it appears that the North Sydney Conservative Forum is not run by CBD readers.
Senator Keneally has politely declined the encore invitation.
“As tempted as I am to come along and hear about Mr Camenzuli’s legal battles with Scott Morrison, I will decline this kind invitation,” the senator, who is standing for the lower house seat of Fowler, told CBD.
Our theory a year ago was that former Liberal MP Ross Cameron slipped the NSW senator on to the list when they both worked at Sky.
Camenzuli could use the talents of whoever it was, since he was unceremoniously punted from the Liberals on Wednesday (a decision he plans to challenge). Maybe the trickster could slip him back into the party.
LIBERAL BLUES
It’s not just Roseville Liberals antsy at the way Morrison and his allies have managed the party’s preselection process.
Immigration Minister Alex Hawke ruled the roost of the NSW Young Liberals from 2002 to 2005, so it must have stung a little more than usual on Tuesday when the organisation’s current generation of apparatchiks unanimously condemned him.
The motion, seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, starts off anodyne but has a barb in the tail.
It recognises the importance of preselecting candidates early for parties to stay competitive, something that the NSW Liberals have only just done on the eve of a federal election campaign.
In the opinion of the Young Liberals, that’s Hawke’s fault.
They “condemn the attempts by the Federal Leader’s Representative, the Hon Alex Hawke MP, to frustrate and subvert the democratic preselection process”.
Moderate and hard right members of the Young Liberals waved the motion through, while people aligned with Hawke’s soft right were nowhere to be seen, according to CBD’s spies.
The minister’s office wouldn’t comment on the slapdown, which has no practical effect, from the junior cadres.
SMOKE SIGNALS
The halls of Parliament House were ghostly quiet during the February sitting period, after MPs and senators were told in no uncertain terms that access to the building for non-occupants was restricted to “essential parliamentary business”.
Some MPs were therefore unimpressed to spot the Australian Taxpayers Association’s Brian Marlow, who runs the group’s pro-vaping arm Legalise Vaping Australia, in the corridors.
Registered lobbyists had their orange passes blocked from scanning in at security points due to COVID-19 restrictions, leaving them a rarer sighting and at the mercy of passholders.
Marlowe would not reveal the identity of the person who signed him into the building, but Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz was happy to say he had met with Marlowe and his office had likely smoothed the lobbyist’s entry through security for “essential parliamentary business”.
“I’m not going to disclose everything that he and I discussed but yes, it was,” senator Abetz said. “And I then discussed at Estimates issues of vaping.” Smooth.
CHECKING OUT
Thursday in Parliament House resembled a giant departure lounge as denizens count down to the election.
A couple of staffers with big suitcases were seen walking through the corridors, while a slew of trolleys were stacked with boxes of photocopy paper, bottles of wine, paper towels, a big box of post-it notes and fluoro markers.
Spoils of the coming war, no doubt.
But the corridors of the ministerial wing were very quiet as it appears that staff have already started to de-camp to Liberal Campaign HQ in Brisbane (apparently it began last week).
Meanwhile, Labor’s headquarters are in Sydney’s trendy Surry Hills amid the startups and coffee shops.
The office of campaign spokesman Simon Birmingham has already headed to Brisbane and so have key people in deputy leader Barnaby Joyce’s office. They might not be back. Who knows?
Jacqueline Maley cuts through the noise of the federal election campaign with news, views and expert analysis. Sign up to our Australia Votes 2022 newsletter here.