Liberals’ spectacular council failure could not have been more disastrous

The catastrophic administrative bungle that has plunged the NSW Liberals into chaos will have long-lasting impacts for a party that needs to regroup after a state election loss and win two looming byelections. It will also cause huge reputational damage ahead of the federal election.

The spectacular failure to meet a long-standing deadline to submit candidate nominations could not have been any more disastrous for the Liberals. The northern beaches, once its blue-ribbon heartland, is the worst hit, with not a single Liberal candidate nominated for the local government elections on September 14.

Instead, the party will likely surrender all power in that area to the Your Northern Beaches group, which has become a powerful force under the leadership of popular mayor Michael Regan, who is now the MP for Wakehurst.

The Liberals had grand plans to seize control of the council. Instead, it will have zero representation in the area at the same time as it wants to reclaim federal seats that it had lost to teal candidates in the last federal election. Sophie Scamps, in Mackellar, is one of those teals in their sights.

Local government is a well-trodden path to state and federal government. On the northern beaches, for example, former federal Mackellar MP Jason Falinski served on what was Warringah Council, Manly MP James Griffin was a Manly councillor and Pittwater MP Rory Amon was on Northern Beaches Council.

Now the party faces a four-year vacuum with a limited talent pool from which to draw for future elections. There will be a dearth of Liberal councillors plugged into local issues, groups or the community and if the party was hoping to inflict damage on the NSW Labor government over its housing reforms, that is a tough ask without elected officials.

Former federal MP Jason Falinski was once a Liberal councillor.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The bungle also exposes the party’s head office as a rabble, which could not even get forms in on time. This will be a huge concern to federal leader Peter Dutton ahead of an election. There are several marginal NSW seats in play, including Gilmore, Banks, Robertson, Reid and Lindsay with affected councils.

Penrith Council, for example, is in the Liberal-held seat of Lindsay which is on a 6.4 per cent margin. In one Penrith ward, the failure for the Liberals to nominate for the council elections means five Labor councillors are automatically elected because there were no other candidates.

All eyes, of course, are not just on council and federal elections. The resignations of former NSW treasurer Matt Kean and former premier Dominic Perrottet have prompted byelections in the seats of Hornsby and Epping respectively. A poor performance at the polls on October 19 will be disastrous for the state Liberals.

Interestingly, the very reason Liberal HQ introduced centralised nominations was because of another administrative bungle, although on a far smaller scale.

In 1973, Liberal health minister Harry Jago failed to hand his nomination form in on time to recontest the blue-ribbon seat of Gordon. The good burghers of Gordon had no Liberal to support, and a Democratic Labor Party candidate won the seat.

It was the only time the DLP held a seat in the NSW lower house and Jago always blamed the then secretary of the NSW Liberals for failing to remind him to lodge his paperwork.

More than 50 years later, another secretary of the party, Richard Shields, is being blamed for a botched nomination process. Shields will not survive the fallout from this one, but the bigger issue is the mid- to long-term damage done to a party that finds itself in opposition everywhere it turns.

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