NSW Liberals must put their house in order

The NSW Liberal Party’s disastrous bungle in failing to nominate about 140 candidates in 16 NSW councils for next month’s local government elections demonstrates it is not fit for purpose to oversee the upcoming federal campaign in the state that is likely to decide the contest between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton. The situation needs urgent attention. Time is running out, major economic and strategic issues are at stake, and Newspoll is showing the government and the opposition locked at 50-50 on the two-party-preferred vote.

Incompetence and dysfunctional behaviour in the NSW branch were factors in Tony Abbott’s loss of the 2010 poll that left the nation with a hung parliament, a minority Labor government and three chaotic years as the Greens exerted leverage over Julia Gillard. Underperformance by the NSW branch also contributed to Scott Morrison’s defeat in 2022. In their review of that campaign, the party’s former federal director, Brian Loughnane, and senator Jane Hume uncovered serious problems in the state divisions, including in NSW. Factional disputes delayed preselections, they found, leaving insufficient time for candidates to be introduced locally. And potentially attractive candidates became discouraged from contesting preselection, narrowing the options available to the party. The inability of some state executives to make timely and necessary decisions to put the party in a winning position in key seats resulted in members not being involved in preselections and a reluctance to volunteer. Public discussion of internal party issues became a diversion, adding to the dispiriting mood.

The debacle over the failure to nominate the local council candidates and the subsequent acrimony suggest the disarray will be worse in the next eight months than in 2022. But the short timeframe given to Mr Loughnane to review the situation and report to the federal party by September 2 gives space for an efficient regime, accountable to the federal executive, to be up and running in time for the campaign. The Opposition Leader must demand nothing less.

Factional and personal fights in the NSW branch, particularly over local councils, are nothing new. They were causing trouble, as Dennis Shanahan wrote in Wednesday’s paper, since before John Howard sent in Tony Staley as an administrator 25 years ago. The party also needs to lift its game in Victoria, where it has been riven by division for too long, and in Western Australia and South Australia where it is languishing from defeats.