It doesn’t get much dirtier: Pyne plots against Liberals

Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne during Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra.

Is the dam breaching on Christopher Pyne? The Australian has been told that on Saturday, June 22, 2013, Pyne, the boss of the left faction of the Liberal Party in South Australia, rang Peter Gandolfi, a mayor in the South Australian electorate of Barker, and asked him to run as an independent against Tony Pasin. Pasin was the Liberal candidate pre­selected in that seat in March the previous year.

Read that again. Slowly.

It doesn’t get much dirtier than asking someone to run as an independent to win a federal seat at the expense of your own party because the preselected Liberal candidate is a conservative. Pyne was then leader of opposition business, apparently loyal to securing government for Tony Abbott in the upcoming federal election.

Pyne told The Australian yesterday that “it’s not true”. Yet Pyne’s suggestion to Gandolfi has been reported to The Australian by a few sources who also say that Gandolfi said “no thanks” and that Pasin, who won the seat, heard about Pyne’s brazen plot earlier this year.

Let’s not mince words. Just as the Liberal base is fracturing, looking elsewhere for core liberal values, Pyne’s actions demonstrate that power is more important to him than principles or the party.

Here was Pyne in July 2015: “I think we have suffered in the last decade or so in not having enough women in our partyroom.”

The federal cabinet minister also said he wanted to see more women enter parliament “with the support — if not of a husband or a spouse or a partner — of a network of people who can make it ­happen.”

Now the senior SA Liberal and left-wing factional boss has signalled his intention to boot out ­Nicolle Flint, the young and talented federal member who won the seat of Boothby last year, if a looming redistribution abolishes his seat of Sturt or makes it less winnable. Instead of wanting to support more women into parliament, now it’s: Move over, I’m Pyne and it’s mine.

While it’s a mystifying message, there is nothing puzzling about Pyne looking after Pyne. And plenty in the party have had enough.

“This will be civil war.” That’s the view shared by a few high-ranking Liberal MPs who spoke to The Australian this week. It’s a “test for Turnbull”, one said. “There is a lot of anger and disbelief” at Pyne’s power game against Flint, a talented newcomer and young, conservative Liberal MP. If it happens, then “it will show that the so-called moderates in the Liberal Party are complete hypocrites”, a senior Liberal said: “There they are beating their chests about the need for more Liberal women to enter parliament.” Another said: “Flint is a prime example of a great candidate with a very bright future entering parliament, and Pyne wants to knock her off?”

It’s passing strange that the factional boss’s influence at the state level hasn’t translated into putting women into parliament either. He and his left-wing ally, Simon Birmingham, control the state’s Liberal women’s council: four of its five past presidents have been full-time staff members of Pyne, Birmingham or Anne Ruston, the other left-wing Liberal in federal parliament. And in a curious case of underachievement, Pyne and his left faction haven’t secured a seat for a new Liberal woman in the House of Representatives since 1996. Instead of doing what it should — provide a pipeline for good grassroots Liberal women to enter parliament — the Pyne-­controlled women’s council is full of factional women who shore up his power on the party’s state executive and state council.

It’s the conservatives in the SA Liberal Party who are providing support for women to enter parliament, promoting them on the party’s rural and regional council, the Young Liberals and as vice-presidents on the state executive. This is the parliamentary pipeline for young Liberal women, including Nicola Centofanti, Caroline Rhodes and Jocelyn Sutcliffe who have more on their CV than being a full-time staffer to a Liberal MP.

Women like Flint, too, the first female South Australian lower house MP since 1996. The 39-year-old grew up in a farming family in the state’s southeast. She entered federal parliament because conservatives within the SA Liberal Party identified her and supported her as a talented Liberal who understood the party base and liberal principles.

Flint’s principles come from lived experience, not student activism, and her impressive CV explains why senior ministers say that this talented conservative woman deserves to be promoted in the next cabinet reshuffle.

Beyond the women-in-politics front, Pyne’s influence hasn’t boosted the state Liberal Party either. Opposition Leader Steven Marshall is a factional ally and his chief of staff is a former Pyne staffer, yet for all of Pyne’s apparent political brilliance Marshall isn’t flying high in the polls, which is disappointing given the Weatherill government’s stuff-ups: power blackouts and the world’s highest electricity prices, child-protection disasters, aged-care scandals, record state debt, the country’s highest unemployment rate, and so on and so on. Instead, Nick Xenophon is on the march and Marshall is left to pray for a win at next year’s state election.

And there’s not much for the most senior SA Liberal to crow about in Canberra. During the term of the Howard government, South Australian influence translated into a cabinet line-up that included Alexander Downer, Nick Minchin, Robert Hill, Amanda Vanstone and Ian McLachlan. Alan Ferguson was president of the Senate and Neil Andrew was Speaker of the House. Back then, SA Libs held up to 10 seats in SA. Now they hold four and only Pyne and Birmingham sit in ­cabinet.

Let’s follow outcomes some more. Pyne has been in federal parliament for 24 years, yet no significant Liberal policy win sits naturally next to his name. Nothing while he was education minister. Nor in industry or innovation.

As Defence Industry Minister, throwing $50 billion last year at a submarine contract in SA to shore up his re-election wasn’t sound policy.

Thinking about word-­associ­ation tests, the one that fits Pyne is factional. And on that front, it wasn’t smart for him to brag, in June, about having so much influence that left-wing Liberals would secure same-sex marriage. It was plain dumb for him to blow up his relationship with key factional ally and Defence Minister Marise Payne. As one senior Liberal MP told The Australian: “They are constantly at war, the relationship is poisonous to the point where many senior Liberals on the left have stepped away from Pyne.”

Senior Liberals told this newspaper that Pyne’s biggest achievement is “survival”. He’s funny and quick-witted and great at ingratiating himself with the leadership group and the leader. First, it was Malcolm Turnbull, with Pyne seeking out help from the left-wing GetUp! to help Turnbull over the line in the 2009 leadership ballot. When Abbott won, he was advised to ignore Pyne’s declarations of political love. Abbott ignored the many warnings, only to see Pyne seamlessly switch back to Turnbull.

Several junior and senior colleagues have noted that Pyne’s political games were kept in check by Minchin, who was his factional adversary in federal parliament. In short, when Minchin was around, there was less room for Pyne’s internal mischief.

At last year’s election, the federal member for Sturt said he felt like Elizabeth Taylor’s eighth husband: “I know what needs to be done, I’ve just got to try and keep it interesting.” Pyne should stop trying to be interesting. His political power trips have zero to do with Liberal principles and he looks increasingly like a factional emperor with no clothes who will further wreck an already wounded Turnbull government.

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