Explosive secret tapes and the hard-right religious plot

A plan to promote religious candidates for preselection and place conservative warlords in electorates has been exposed.

Marcus Bastiaan and Michael Kroger.

The Victorian Liberal party’s hard right actively recruited members to branches as part of a plot to promote religious candidates for preselection and place conservative warlords in electorates to organise internal activities.

The secret strategy was laid out in an explosive high-level discussion between former federal Liberal vice-president Karina Okotel and another senior Liberal Party member. The Weekend Australian understands the discussion was recorded,

Ms Okotel is understood to have privately admitted the existence of a party database covering conservative members and that she was “recruiting” members in the lead-up to the federal election.

Ms Okotel, who has told people “we are not crazy hardline nuts’’, admitted she blew up her relationship with powerbroker Michael Kroger and his backers because she was furious that religious candidates were not being preselected by the faction.

Vice President of the Liberal Party of Australia Karina Okotel. Picture: Gary Ramage

Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar. Picture: AAP

Ms Okotel’s supporters are also being accused of plotting revenge attacks against two senior Victorian federal Liberal MPs: Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar and former Howard minister Kevin Andrews in a factional split that is increasingly being played out in public.

Ms Okotel, who has told people she felt like she had been “beaten and shot at’’ and compared herself to a gangland member who had “survived all the bullet wounds’’, did not respond to The Weekend Australian.

The allegations appear to centre on claims that Liberal electoral staff have been misused for political campaigning purposes. Ms Okotel’s brother Joshua Bonney left Mr Sukkar’s office in late 2018. Mr Bonney did not respond to The Weekend Australian.

The Weekend Australian understands that Ms Okotel, now in an alliance with party moderates, had been strategising to get more religious conservatives elected and backed a decentralised factional system to reduce the role of powerbrokers.

A senior Liberal source told The Weekend Australian. “It’s the ultimate irony that Karina was more conservative than the conservatives and is now helping out the moderates.’’

Liberal Party sources familiar with the conversation do not wish to be named but have expressed shock at her comments, and the conversation is now the subject of gossip in Liberal Party circles.

Victorian Liberal president Robert Clark. Picture: Josie Hayden

Sources have told The Weekend Australian that Ms Okotel outlined a strategy of introducing conservative warlords in each electoral council in a bid to decentralise factional power and prevent a blow-up that occurred in 2018 when she did not get her way with the faction then run by Mr Kroger and Marcus Bastiaan and strongly supported by Mr Sukkar.

It’s understood that Ms Okotel was aware of a conservative database to help win ballots after her conservative religious followers and she split in disgust in 2018 over the failure of her group to endorse Christians for parliament, only to form an unlikely grouping with Liberal moderates. It’s alleged she described the feeling as like being a survivor of Melbourne’s gangland war.

Ms Okotel’s social policy views put her on the hard right of the party. She has drawn on Scott Morrison’s faith for evidence of religion’s role in the party.

As the party mulls possible federal intervention in the Victorian branch, the religious hard liner allegedly revealed while talking in the lead-up to the federal election that she had courted current Victorian Liberal president Robert Clark and supported state leader Michael O’Brien’s values. It has also been revealed Ms Okotel had dinner with Mr Clark who she is using to find out information.

Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger and vice president Karina Okotel. Picture by Sean Davey.

Ms Okotel suffered a bruising transition of power when she took her group of hard right Christian supporters away from the conservative forces and into the moderate camp. It’s understood she likes the way Mr O’Brien votes and his broad values system and was encouraged by her dinner with Mr Clark.

Her votes are now crucial to keeping the current Liberal administration in power in Victoria.

Senior Liberals opposed to Mr Clark’s presidency are pushing for federal intervention in the Victorian branch. The alarm has been exacerbated after the private details of hundreds of party members were leaked to discredit federal and state MPs across Melbourne, sparking an internal investigation into the release of the highly confidential information.

The Liberal Party has since been inundated with complaints from members who are being cold-called to discuss their private political affairs.