Dominic Perrottet lashed by departing Liberal MP Lou Amato

The third MP dumped from the party’s upper house ticket says the Premier’s approach is flawed and unmeritorious.

Lou Amato has taken a shot at Dominic Perrottet after being axed from the party’s upper house ticket. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

The third NSW Liberal MP dumped from the party’s upper house ticket has broken his ­silence to lash out at Premier Dom­inic Perrottet, saying his notion that “gender-identity politics would impress the electorate” is flawed and unmeritorious.

Liberal Legislative Council MP Lou Amato was one of three Liberal males – including Legislative Council president Matthew Mason-Cox and MP Shayne Mallard – removed from the party’s ticket as part of a cross-factional deal in late December that saw three women promoted in their place.

Orchestrated by Treasurer Matt Kean and Employee Relations Minister Damien Tude­hope, the arrangement to install Disability Services Minister Natasha Maclaren-Jones, Susan Carter and Rachel Mertons was initially rejected by the party’s state executive before passing on the second go.

In an email to supporters on Monday morning, Mr Amato said the backroom factional deal represented a “total rejection of our time-honoured process” of democratically selecting candidates, as he criticised the Premier for his efforts to bypass a democratic vote

“The Premier’s notion that gender-identity politics would impress the electorate into granting him a further term of office is flawed for several reasons,” Mr Amato wrote, questioning why women were chosen to represent areas they had no geographic or historical connection with.

“This is why a cross-factional deal occurred between the Kean, Hawke and Tudehope factions to install candidates not based on merit but factional obedience.”

Mr Amato urged party members to contact NSW Liberal Party president Maria Kovacic and state director Chris Stone and call on them to “ensure ­democratic preselections were ­restored”.

The backlash follows a turbulent week for Mr Perrottet after he outed himself for wearing a Nazi uniform at his 21st fancy dress birthday party in 2003.

The Premier said the decision was a “terrible mistake” that he had grappled with for the past two decades.

A visibly emotional Mr Perrottet insisted he had no recollection about who attended his birthday party in Sydney’s northwest, nor whether a rumoured photo of him wearing the Nazi outfit ­existed.

Mr Amato’s backlash followed similar rebukes from Mr Mason-Cox and Mr Mallard in the wake of the deal’s imprimatur by the Liberal state executive.

Mr Mason-Cox, elected to the upper house presidency in defiance of then premier Gladys Bere­jiklian in 2021, wrote to Liberal members saying the imposition of the three women was an “unprecedented and dangerous” attempt to use state executive powers. “No merit, no democratic preselections, just women being used as a means to a political end,” he wrote.