As broad church reels, Alex Antic turns up the heat

Hardline conservative senator Alex Antic is at the heart of a left-right malaise plaguing the Liberals nationally.

Hardline Liberal Party conservative senator Alex Antic. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

The South Australian Liberal division has become a miserable microcosm of the left-right malaise plaguing the Liberals nationally.

With the division reeling from crushing back-to-back losses just 12 months ago – the one-term obliteration of Steven Marshall’s government and the reduction of its national representation at the federal poll to just one seat in suburban Adelaide – there are two schools of thought in SA Liberal circles as to what went wrong.

Approach any two people from opposing sides of the SA Liberal Party and these are the divergent explanations you receive for last year’s double drubbing.

The Marshall government was defeated on March 19 last year because of two things only – Covid fatigue and the enormous unpopularity of prime minister Scott Morrison, whose ambivalence on climate change and tin ear on women’s issues rankled in a historically small-L liberal state.

Alternatively, the Marshall government was defeated because it was Labor-lite. It lost the business community by insipidly acquiescing to the health boffins in managing Covid-19. It lost socially conservative voters because moderate MPs backed progressive policies such as late-term abortion, euthanasia and an Indigenous voice to parliament.

Against this backdrop, the party soon will face a significant internal test, one that threatens to inflate all these tensions within factions that hold irreconcilable assessments of why they’re on the political outer.

At the centre of these tensions is one of the most polarising figures in Australian Liberal politics – hardline conservative senator Alex Antic.

Antic has become a reviled figure in moderate Liberal circles in SA, and even some party figures historically regarded as conservative remain deeply unimpressed by his decision to withdraw parliamentary support for the Morrison government last term in protest against vaccination mandates.

“We should have kicked him out of the party there and then,” one Liberal figure told Inquirer this week.

Others in the party disagree – and they do so in growing numbers, as across the past 18 months there has been a surge in conservative members in SA, many from suburban and outer suburban churches who became dismayed at the state party’s social liberalism under Marshall.

The ideological chasm that now exists in the party was underscored this week when it emerged that at the same time many Christians are flocking to the party to join the right, a group of moderates is hatching plans to create a dedicated LGBTIQ sub-branch to give transgender people a welcoming place inside the SA Liberal Party.

Former health minister Anne Ruston.

The left of the party has tried to portray the Christian membership surge as a branch-stacking exercise. Antic and his supporters argue (plausibly) that the unsung heroine of this recruitment drive in fact has been a moderate – former state attorney-general Vickie Chapman, the architect of the abortion laws that so inflamed traditional Liberal conservatives, prompting dozens if not hundreds of churchgoers to sign up.

The flashpoint now is a looming Senate preselection that in the normal turn of events would pass without notice.

As things stand, the ticket runs as follows: moderate and former health minister Anne Ruston at No.1, the genial if unremarkable David Fawcett at No.2 and Antic at No.3. There is talk that the Antic forces are angling to push their man up the ticket to the No.1 spot as part of their broader campaign to get the Liberals back to traditional conservative principles. Conversely, some on the other side of the divide are wondering whether the preselection could present an opportunity to kill Antic’s career dead by finding another third candidate to force Antic down to the unwin­nable fourth spot.

Ruston is a former rose grower from the Riverland who has little time for factional games, even though she soon may find herself in the thick of one. Her supporters say she is bracing herself for a possible challenge and is frustrated by the distraction from her role as opposition health and aged care spokeswoman.

She issued only a brief statement to Inquirer for this piece, saying: “Preselections are a matter for the party members and I will hold my discussions with them privately. I remain focused on working hard to win back government as part of the Coalition leadership team.”

The prospect of Ruston being demoted has alarmed many as the party grapples with the perception it is lagging on gender representation, especially in a state where the Malinauskas government was elected with seven new female MPs, and women forming the majority with 14 of Labor’s 27 lower house seats.

As he struggles to rebuild the party, battling state Liberal leader David Speirs has learnt the hard way that publicly urging the party to promote more women is the best way to install more men.

On two occasions now, with this year’s Bragg by-election (caused by the departure of Chapman) and the subsequent resignation of former state health minister Stephen Wade, Speirs has publicly called on the party to get behind female replacements.

In both cases the party opted for men, almost as if to demonstrate its dogged commitment to the belief in meritocracy and reject any outside interference over the authority of local branches.

“It will be an absolute disaster if it happens with Anne, but I’m worried they’re mad enough to do it,” one source tells Inquirer.

For his part, Antic offers no comment on his designs on the No.1 spot. Some of his supporters say the issue of him rolling Ruston is a “white flag attack” aimed merely at further painting him as a right-wing rabblerouser. One party figure says Antic will be happy to remain third.

But Antic does tell Inquirer that the Liberal Party, both in SA and nationally, needs to reconnect with its traditional base. He also vows not to stop speaking out on issues that are dear to him and his supporters, as he is increasingly doing with videos he is posting on social media and in the regular missives he writes on policy issues and emails to party members.

“Australians do not want their politicians to resemble low-rent bureaucrats reading memorised talking points,” Antic tells Inquirer.

“They want authenticity and they want us to fight for our shared values. The voters of Australia have demonstrably rejected any suggestion that they want the Liberal Party to be a Labor-lite organisation.

“Establishment politics will not win the day. We need to be brave and fight on all fronts.”

In some ways, the left-right gulf within the SA Liberals simply may be a reflection of society’s growing inability to agree to disagree. And it is reminiscent of the ructions tearing apart the Victorian Liberals with moves to expel conservative MP Moira Deeming from its ranks over her appearance at a Let Women Speak rally in March highlighting concerns about the impact of transgender rights.

Just over 20 years ago, the SA division enjoyed its highest influence on the national stage, in a mutually respectful and amiable alliance between conservatives Ian McLachlan, Alexander Downer and Nick Minchin and moderates Amanda Vanstone, Robert Hill and Trish Worth. With a commanding consensus leader in John Howard who honoured his belief in a broad church, these putative rivals worked together effectively in a government that ran Australia for 11 years.

Fast forward to 2023, when the SA Liberals are even prepared to threaten legal action against each other for defamation, as happened earlier this year when Antic forced Liberal member Hannah Marsh, a former staff member to moderate powerbroker Christopher Pyne, to delete and apologise for a tweet she wrote impugning his character.