Malcolm Turnbull's tough call on renewal

PRESELECTIONS cause opposition leaders endless headaches. They can't stay out of them, but they can't get too involved in them, either.

The first sitting federal Liberal MP lost preselection on the weekend. Dennis Jensen, the member for the Perth seat of Tangney, was defeated by finance executive Glenn Piggott.

This is the second time Jensen has lost a preselection as the sitting member. The last time was before the 2007 election, when John Howard intervened to ensure the West Australian Liberal Party state council saved the first-term MP.

Mr Howard was trying to avoid an outspoken Mr Jensen rocking the boat during a tough election campaign. That won't happen again. Mr Howard is now retired and busy cheering on the Australian cricket team in England.

Malcolm Turnbull isn't planning to interfere in the state council's affairs, and wouldn't have the authority even if he wanted to.

Mr Turnbull wrote Mr Jensen a reference for Saturday's ballot, but Liberal sources in the west say the two-paragraph appraisal of Mr Jensen's contribution to public life didn't exactly go beyond the call of duty to support the embattled incumbent. In fact, it read a little like the letter Peter King received from Mr Howard before his unsuccessful defence against Mr Turnbull's preselection challenge for the blue-ribbon Sydney seat of Wentworth in 2004.

Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop was understood to have lobbied, not for Mr Jensen or Mr Piggott, but for corporate affairs manager Libby Lyons, a relative of former conservative prime minister Joseph Lyons. Ms Bishop was keen for the Liberal Party to bolster its number of women in the parliament. Only 22 per cent of Coalition MPs are female, compared with more than 35 per cent on the Labor side.

Ms Lyons finished a distant third -- a sure sign that Ms Bishop's influence, even in her own state division, has waned considerably since she was forced to quit the shadow treasury portfolio.

The Liberal Party badly needs to renew its ageing line-up if it is to present a fresh alternative at the next election. Of the 26 Coalition MPs over 60, 24 are on the back bench. A number are from WA, but not one was challenged.

Instead, Mr Jensen, the 47-year-old nuclear scientist with a PhD, was knocked off by a candidate in his 50s, further raising the average age of the WA Liberal line-up.

In the months ahead, Mr Turnbull will have some tough decisions to make. Does he stay out of preselection contests or does he intervene? Whatever he decides to do will carry risks.

If Mr Turnbull stays out of stoushes, particularly in his own backyard of NSW, he will be accused of not standing up for his parliamentary colleagues. That was Mr Howard's fate in the late 1980s before he was dumped as leader.

If Mr Turnbull decides to intervene and defend his ageing line-up, he will rightly be condemned for failing in the main task of a first-term opposition leader -- facilitating party renewal.

The third option is that Mr Turnbull selectively intervenes to help rejuvenate his line-up while occasionally going into bat for sitting MPs he really values. But such subjective judgments will no doubt leave sections of his party seething, while intervening and failing to win the day would be a disaster for his authority.

When the electoral redistributions for Queensland and NSW are finalised, these state divisions will open up their preselection nominations. They are going to make for some interesting political viewing.

Peter van Onselen is contributing editor at The Australian