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‘Not a dictatorship’: Liberals blast Morrison, Hawke over preselection debacle

By Michael Koziol

Senior Liberals will push to reduce the power of the party leader among a series of major changes to the way candidates are chosen in NSW, saying the preselection debacle under Scott Morrison must never happen again.

But in his first substantive comments since the election loss, Morrison’s close ally Alex Hawke hit back, rejecting claims he deliberately frustrated the selection process and saying the party’s biggest problem was the perception it failed to respect women and take their complaints seriously.

Scott Morrison with his right-hand man and close ally in NSW, Alex Hawke.

Scott Morrison with his right-hand man and close ally in NSW, Alex Hawke.Credit: Renee Nowytarger

There is widespread anger in the party over the failure to allow members to choose candidates for many seats, as well as Morrison’s captain’s pick of Katherine Deves in Warringah. Several Liberals believe her comments about transgender athletes contributed to the party’s losses.

In an email to party members on Tuesday, NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg and women’s council delegate Jane Buncle proposed several changes to the party’s constitution to prevent a repeat of the stalemate over candidate selection.

“Your rights as members of our great party were taken away before the election,” Bragg and Buncle wrote. “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.”

But Hawke immediately hit back, telling the Herald and The Age: “The idea that’s the way things occurred is incorrect.” Hawke said Morrison “always acted in the interests of the Liberal Party, and continues to do so”.

“Some people need to look in the mirror about their role in our election defeat and what they did in the lead-up to it that contributed to the nature of the defeat,” Hawke said, though he declined to elaborate.

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“I agree with Andrew Bragg there are issues that have to be addressed in the preselection process in NSW [and] I want to add the vetting and probity of our candidates on to the reform list that Andrew Bragg has raised.

“Our biggest failing at this election was the perception that we didn’t have respect for women and women’s rights. We have to be better at handling internal complaints from women whether they be our staff, whether they be our party members, whether they be Young Liberals, whether they be made against parliamentarians or aspiring candidates.”

Morrison deliberately favoured women among his hand-picked candidates, though only one was successful – Jenny Ware in Craig Kelly’s former southern Sydney seat of Hughes.

The Liberals’ primary vote went backwards in Warringah, and despite help from Morrison during the campaign, his chosen candidate Maria Kovacic failed to win the seat of Parramatta against Labor’s Andrew Charlton (though the swing to Labor was small).

Bragg and Buncle said they would use the NSW Liberal Party’s next annual general meeting to propose a number of changes to the constitution that would reduce the power of the leader’s representative.

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They are calling for the party’s executive committee to publish “a clear timetable for [candidate] selections” which must be followed, including a requirement for the nomination review committee (which vets candidates) to meet within a prescribed timeframe.

The party’s state or federal executives would only be able to intervene in the process once that timetable had failed. If the leader’s representative had a conflict of interest, they would have to appoint another person to attend in their place. If they failed to do so, the state executive would have the power to appoint someone else.

Buncle, a barrister and member of the party’s moderate wing, was originally expected to be the Liberal candidate for Warringah after Morrison failed to convince former premiers Mike Baird or Gladys Berejiklian to run.

However, she withdrew her nomination but has never spoken publicly about why.

Bragg, also a moderate, had campaign responsibilities for Sydney seats including Warringah and Wentworth.

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He has previously said Deves’ remarks about transgender issues – which he called a “confected culture war” – contributed to the Liberal Pary’s losses to teal independents.

“That really damaged our brand,” he said last week. “People just couldn’t understand why [we spent] all this time talking about the trans issues which community and professional sporting groups are managing themselves.”

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Original URL: https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/federal/not-a-dictatorship-liberals-blast-morrison-hawke-over-preselection-debacle-20220531-p5apuy.html