NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman’s admission he was left in the dark about Tuesday’s federal takeover, and that he hadn’t yet read the damning review that prompted it, appears a failure of communication 101.
It will also do little to convince voters the party has got its own house in order, or that its federal and state wings are on the same page. They may not be on the same chapter.
The takeover itself, spruiked as a necessity to ensure the NSW division was “campaign-ready” for the federal election, failed to land without turbulence, leaving the inability to brief the state leader aside.
Former NSW minister Rob Stokes was one of those announced by the federal executive on Tuesday as part of a three-person committee to oversee the division through to the election. When, while he was away in New Zealand, journalists rang the former planning minister for comment that night, he said it was news to him, he was honoured but unavailable.
Peter Dutton blamed NSW, calling it a minor hitch; Mr Speakman pointed the finger at a rushed federal announcement.
On Wednesday, Anthony Albanese labelled it a “farce”, calling both sets of executive bodies “incompetent”.
While paling in comparison to the NSW party’s recent issues, optics matter in politics, even small ones. These failures will do little to convince voters it could oversee their own.
August’s council nominations debacle was enough of a fiasco to warrant a spot on the BBC’s homepage, albeit the international edition, and took the scalps of then state director Richard Shields and – with the federal intervention – the NSW president, Don Harwin.
Neither that shambles nor Friday’s revelations that Liberal Pittwatter MP Rory Amon had been charged with child sex offences was Mr Speakman’s fault. Nor are either, by the letter of the law, within his purview.
And while he says the intervention does not signify a lack of faith in his leadership, the fact no one thought to pick up the phone or fully brief him does little to suggest Canberra is swimming in faith either.
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