Pyne accused of plan to oust Liberal in 2013

Christopher Pyne has been accused of attempting to undermine a Liberal candidate at the 2013 election.

Christopher Pyne. Picture: AAP

South Australia’s most senior Liberal MP, Christopher Pyne, has been accused of attempting to undermine the party’s candidate for the seat of Barker at the 2013 federal election by suggesting an independent run against him.

The Australian has been told Mr Pyne, who heads the so-called “moderate” faction in South Australia, rang Peter Gandolfi, the Mayor of Wattle Range Council in the federal seat of Barker, on June 22, 2013, and asked him to run as an independent in the upcoming federal election against the preselected Liberal candidate, conservative Tony Pasin.

The Australian was told Mr Gandolfi said “no thanks”, and that Mr Pasin, who won the seat, heard about Mr Pyne’s plan ­earlier this year.

Mr Pasin yesterday confirmed he was told about Mr Pyne’s intervention earlier this year: “The person who told me said, ‘Mate, I’m about to tell you something that is going to rock your world.’ The person expected me to be shocked. Sadly, I wasn’t shocked because I have witnessed attempts to damage career prospects of young conservatives over a long period of time. I have become all too familiar with this kind of Machiavellian behaviour.”

Mr Pyne, the opposition leader of business under opposition ­leader Tony Abbott, saidfrom ­Israel that “it’s not true”. “I have never suggested to anyone that they run as an independent against the Liberal Party,” he said. Asked if he called Mr Gandolfi on June 22, 2013, Mr Pyne said: “No, I don’t remember doing that at all.

“I know I’ve spoken to Peter Gandolfi many times over the years because he’d been around the Liberal Party for a long time and I have talked to him about many issues, about preselections, because he had been a candidate, most recently for MacKillop.

“But I have never asked anybody to run against an endorsed Liberal candidate as an independent.”

Mr Gandolfi declined to comment yesterday.

Mr Pyne has also been drawn into a controversy over the seat of Boothby in South Australia held by young conservative first-term MP Nicolle Flint. As The Australian reported last week, Mr Pyne declared to Liberal colleagues during a private meeting on September 14 that he would seek Ms Flint’s seat if a looming redistribution either abolished his seat or redrew it unfavourably. Mr Pyne is reported to have said: “I’m not going to run in a seat I can’t win.”

Mr Pasin said Mr Pyne had not given him a single question to ask during question time since “I had a crack at Pyne at the first partyroom meeting after it was reported he had gloated about being in the ‘winner’s circle’ on same-sex marriage”. “I got up and said, ‘Prime Minister, what this points to is that there are people in this room who are making your life difficult. If we really want to be in the winner’s circle we need to support you’.”