Speakman rejects federal push to take over NSW Liberals after preselection debacle

NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman has backed the party’s desperate legal bid to force the state’s electoral agency to reopen nominations for local government elections after it missed the deadline, but says calls for a federal intervention into the state’s division are “premature”.

NSW party president Don Harwin faces calls to follow the former state director out the door after an unprecedented bungle meant Liberals failed to submit nominations on time in 16 council areas. Speakman backed his moderate colleague, saying he had not “done anything wrong”.

Former federal director Brian Loughnane will undertake a short forensic review of how the debacle occurred, after the party failed to submit nomination forms entirely for eight councils and only partially in seven others, resulting in 140 candidates missing out.

The NSW Electoral Commission on Sunday dismissed a second request from Liberal HQ to reopen nominations. Acting Commissioner Matthew Phillips said the failure to publish formal notification of the cut-off deadline seven days before nominations closed was insufficient in light of the extensive advertising of the date.

The party’s first request for an extension, which raised concerns about how the electoral notices and nomination forms were issued, was rejected by the Electoral Commission on Saturday afternoon.

In a statement on Sunday afternoon, Harwin threatened legal action if the electoral agency did not acquiesce to the request for a seven-day grace period, saying the mistake went to “heart of ensuring a fair and free election” and the “integrity of our democracy”.

‘[Legal action] is an appropriate thing for us … if we pursue those, and they fail, well, we just have to cop it sweet.’

NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman

Despite being unwilling to comment on the merit of the party’s likely court challenge, Speakman said he supported pursuing every possible option to help candidates who missed out on nomination as long there was a “reasonable legal basis” to do so.

“Clearly there was a serious error at party headquarters. Last week, I described it as a debacle, and it was a debacle, but if there is any way that we can stand up in the interests of candidates, party members and the general public by looking at reasonably viable legal avenues, then we need to explore that,” he said.

“That is an appropriate thing for us at the end of the day, if we pursue those, and they fail, well, we just have to cop it sweet.”

In a letter to state council delegates last week, conservative Liberal vice presidents Geoff Pearson and Peter O’Hanlon said with a federal election on the horizon, the resignations of state director Richard Shields and Harwin were imperative.

“A mere apology is not enough. The state president and the state director must both accept full responsibility for such a massive failure. With leadership comes responsibility. It is now time for Richard and Don to acknowledge and accept that full responsibility,” the pair wrote.

Shields was terminated immediately without compensation late on Thursday night by an extraordinary meeting of the state executive.

However, Speakman defended Harwin, attributing blame to the actual processing and lodgment of nomination forms with the Electoral Commission, which was the responsibility of Shields.

“I haven’t seen any evidence that Mr Harwin has implicated in the mistakes that were made last week,” Speakman said. “You may criticise him and state executive for the lateness in endorsements, which goes to the ability of candidates to get out there and campaign, but it is entirely separate from the process of lodging forms electronically.”

With speculation that federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was considering requesting federal intervention in the NSW division for the second time in three years, Speakman said he understood why his colleagues in Canberra wanted to ensure the state’s campaign capacity was in “tip-top shape”.

But pressed on whether he would support an intervention, Speakman said the calls were “premature at the moment”, instead throwing his support behind the investigation by Loughnane.

The review will be done over the next two weeks and be finished before a meeting of the federal executive on September 2. The federal body will consider whether placing the NSW division into administration via a full intervention is necessary, or whether imposing new staff is sufficient redress.

A senior federal NSW moderate, who cannot speak publicly because of party rules, said the right-wing of the party was using the nominations debacle as an excuse to take control of the NSW division.

“We will not accept the division has been dysfunctional on federal matters because the key preseleections have been conducted, we have Andrew Constance in the field in Gilmore and Scott Yung in Bennelong,” the source said.

“People want to use this as a proxy for their own personal and professional reasons. But on federal matters, the NSW division has demonstrated competence.”

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