Whatever hope the Coalition had of retaining power in NSW must surely have evaporated. Not necessarily because of Dominic Perrottet’s historical offence but the forces at work that compelled him to admit it.
A loss at the state election in March has broader consequences for the Liberal brand and for Peter Dutton who must take command of the national reconstruction effort. It would be the first time since Kevin Rudd took office that Labor was in power federally and in every mainland state.
It is worth recalling that at that time, Campbell Newman, mayor of Brisbane, was deemed the most senior Liberal in the country.
Perrottet may well be forgiven for an appalling lack of judgment as a young man, donning a Nazi uniform for his 21st birthday bash.
The reason he was forced to pre-emptively admit to it underscores the deeper crisis of not only the NSW division and the Liberal Party more broadly.
There is little doubt among the Premier’s colleagues that this was an internal hit on the party leader.
There are three likely motivations: petty personal revenge; a broader factional hit from a splinter group of the Right peeved at preselections, aimed at undermining his leadership; or retaliation from the gaming lobby in response to his proposed reforms.
All possible enthusiasms have their foundations in the rot that has savaged the structural and grassroots ballast of the NSW Liberal Party going back decades.
Personality cults that have run the party like a fiefdom appear to be actively penning the Perrottet government’s obituary with no thought, or care, to the broader consequences. Senior Liberal sources, lamenting the state of the division, say it is dominated by those more concerned about winning factional fights and brawling over the spoils of opposition than they are interested in winning the election.
While seemingly more profound, this is not an affliction confined to the NSW division. The pre-Christmas review of the federal election loss was critical of all state branches for presiding over the decimation of the party’s grassroots while indulging in factionally driven civil wars.
Senior Liberals are foaming in disbelief, at a loss as to what to do.
Dutton’s task is simple in theory but increasingly impossible in execution while the state divisions fight among themselves rather than fight for electoral territory. In trying to address concerns of the moderate voices, he needs to get the right-wing base back on to the primary vote of the Liberal Party ledger.
What they are doing in NSW, as they did in Victoria and is evident in Queensland, is driving the vote in the other direction – driving the base to the minor parties.
The co-ordination between Labor premiers and federal Labor leaders is now a far more sophisticated and devastating operation than in the past.
After the NSW election, should the Coalition lose, Dutton faces the possibility of mainland wall-to-wall Labor premiers and a federal Labor government unleashing the full resources of government against him come the next federal election. This is something that seems lost to the warring tribes of the state divisions of the Liberal Party.
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