NSW Right in factional war

THE Liberal Party has a knack for tearing itself apart and looks to be doing so again in the all important state of NSW.

The once dominant right faction is starting to fracture. Its religiously conservative elements, commonly referred to by detractors as the hard Right, are displeased with a group of right-wingers they believe are turning their backs on the social conservatism that has long defined the faction.

First a bit of history. In NSW in the late 1980s and early '90s a collection of political activists known as the Group ran the organisational Liberal Party. The Group comprised socially progressive and aspiring politicians. They included the likes of former state leader John Brogden and senator Marise Payne, both of whom could just as easily have joined the Left of politics were it not for the influence of trade unions on the Labor Party; and they were less radical than many of their fellow Group supporters.

They had the numbers in the youth arm of the Liberal Party, on the state executive and among most state and federal representatives in NSW. John Howard was part of a minority of conservatives operating within the largest state in the commonwealth. Of course, when Howard returned to the Liberal leadership in 1995, becoming prime minister the following year, the fortunes of the Group began to wane. Prime ministers carry enormous influence in the Liberal Party and Howard's sway ensured the conservatives returned to dominate politics in NSW while he was leading the country, inside the Liberal Party anyway. Bill Heffernan was Howard's frontman, first as party president, then as his representative on the state executive while serving as a senator.

Through time the conservative Right's power grew, so much so that in 2002 it even took over the Young Liberals under the stewardship of Alex Hawke. Hawke, now the federal member for Mitchell, was the first right-wing Young Liberal president since Howard held the position in the '60s. This gave him immediate notoriety inside the party. He rose in public prominence in 2005 when then Liberal leader Brogden suspected him of being the source of malicious rumours against him during a press conference. Brogden resigned the party's leadership in a storm of controversy and Hawke strongly denied the allegations. At the time Hawke was working as an electorate officer for upper house state MP David Clarke, the unofficial leader of the so-called hard Right. He was determined the slur on his name would not prevent him running for parliament, which it did not.

The Right has been the dominant force in the Young Liberals for most of this decade and its authority in preselections has seen it win more contested ballots than it has lost. Hawke's victory in Mitchell was one of those. They have also controlled the numbers on the senior state executive. But the recent split is threatening their dominance, and looks set to see the factional wrangling and deal-making of recent years aired in public.

The split is between state upper house members Clarke and Marie Ficarra, supported by senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and state lower house member Greg Smith, and Hawke and state party president Nick Campbell, who are supported by Heffernan. The view of the former group is that Hawke and his allies are prepared to water down their social conservatism to appeal to Malcolm Turnbull and his new leadership team, which includes Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne, both well-identified Liberal moderates. In other words, they are being accused of political opportunism: suppressing their hard right tendencies for political preferment by a more moderate new leader and his team. Hawke's supporters have responded by attacking the so-called hard Right as being too extreme and unable to work within the broad church that is the Liberal Party.

What happens behind closed doors in politics is akin to the making of sausages: everyone knows how gory it can get but few like to witness it. As Young Liberal president, Hawke was party to any number of membership drives, otherwise known as branch stacks. His new-found enemies in the Right are prepared to open the door to this closed world of political backroom dealings. I know because I have been provided with the email exchanges. The email exchanges are less than edifying and are not the sort of publicity an ambitious new MP is looking for.

The question is: Why is Hawke moving away from the right-wing support that backed him into parliament? He is on the public record with nothing less than strong statements about his social and religious conservatism: "The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity, and when they're blended it's a very powerful duo" and "My religion guides the values and the ethics of the things I do". Yet those in the Liberal Party most strongly aligned to such sentiments feel Hawke is no longer part of their team.

Hawke is likely to be of the view the Liberal Party needs to appeal across the community to win its way back into government. He worries the more socially conservative sections of his party are preventing that happening. Some would consider he has shifted ground since winning his parliamentary seat. It is a fair criticism, but Hawke is trying to appear less hard line.

The significance of the split in the NSW Right of the Liberal Party should not be underestimated. There are some in the Right who like to play down its significance, but that is political soothsaying. The reality is that a profound power shift is in the making and it will likely be met with a great deal of political bastardry before it is resolved. How it will end is anyone's guess. Either way, it is not the sort of organisational goings-on that Turnbull needs when he is down in the polls and trying to win back voter support ahead of a federal election due next year.

Preselections for state and federal seats will begin in the months ahead. Given that Turnbull is a NSW representative, it will be hard for him to stay out of the factional warfare engulfing his home state.

Peter van Onselen is a contributing editor at The Australian and an associate professor of politics and government at Edith Cowan University. He is the author and editor of three books on the Liberal Party.