Peter Dutton blasts ‘hand picked’ NSW preselections

Peter Dutton has called for a clean-up of the NSW Liberal Party and decried its failed preselection process as ‘unacceptable’.

Liberal candidate for Gilmore Andrew Constance has failed to move into federal politics. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Peter Dutton has called for a clean-up of the NSW Liberal Party and decried its failed preselection process as “unacceptable” after Scott Morrison’s hand-picked candidate in Gilmore, ­Andrew Constance, lost his battle to gain the south coast seat of ­Gilmore.

While the margin remained razor thin, with just 222 votes separating the candidates on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese’s govern­ment believes strong flows of absentee votes in Gilmore MP Fiona Phillips’ favour had determined the result 10 days after the nation went to the polls.

Mr Constance’s loss means Mr Morrison and factional ally Alex Hawke’s controversial push to parachute candidates into a raft of seats across NSW has only seen three of those candidates in 12 electorates win.

The Opposition Leader on Tuesday said he could not tell the NSW Liberal division what to do, but blasted the months-long delays in preselecting candidates for winnable seats.

“There’s a lot of cleaning up to do in the NSW division of the Liberal Party. There was an un­acceptable arrangement in relation to preselections at the last election,” he told Sky News.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott called for “heads to roll” in the NSW division following the preselection failures.

“We can’t have the kind of factional machinations which we saw which were designed to deliberately deny democratic preselections,” he told Sky News.

The failure to pick up Gilmore came as leading Liberal moderate Andrew Bragg proposed to reform the party’s NSW constitution in an email to party faithful, claiming amendments were necessary to protect the party’s democratic processes and ensure grassroots members had their say.

In a letter to party members on Tuesday morning sent by Senator Bragg and Jane Buncle, who sits on the party’s state and women’s council, the pair said reform was imperative to see off any future efforts to subvert the party’s democratic processes.

“Your rights as members of our great party were taken away before the election,” the letter said.

“The Liberal Party is Australia’s most successful grassroots movement. It is not a dictatorship and we will not be successful without the engagement of you, our ­members.

“Your right to have your say and select our candidates is the most important reason to be a member. Yet this precious right was taken away as our constitution was twisted and buckled.

“We are determined to ensure that this never happens again.”

Grassroots members were left incensed when seemingly benign vetting processes were weaponised to prevent candidates being selected and moved into the field, preventing the ability for Liberal branches to hold votes on their preferred candidates.

Despite the Australian Electoral Commission not calling the result in Labor’s favour, Ms Phillips attended Labor’s first caucus meeting on Tuesday morning.

Mr Constance defied a 5.3 per cent national swing against the Coalition, recording a 2.5 per cent swing to him after preferences.