The intervention of the NSW Liberal Women’s Council intervention in the IVF debate
has added an interesting new dynamic into the factional wars raging
through the party, with Brendan Nelson staffer Rhondda Vanzella
speaking out on the issue.

The right seems to have the numbers,
but moderates are campaigning very hard to win the urban vice
president’s position and getting former John Tierney up as country vice
president. Too hard, it appears. There’s a lot of whinging going on
about what the priorities of human services minister Joe Hockey’s
office are at the moment. His new portfolio, designed to simply service
deliveries and make them more efficient, hasn’t come together. Party
conservatives say it won’t for a while, as Hockey’s staff are more
preoccupied with internal party matters.

Hockey and his
factional colleagues have every reason to be paranoid. The NSW
moderates have lost almost all their strongholds, like the local Young
Libs and Women’s Council to the jihadists of the right. And the
Liberals currently pointing at Hockey and saying “Um!” might be guilty
of a teeny-weeny amount of hypocrisy. Have they never used
parliamentary offices for internal party campaigns?

Politicians shouldn’t go kite flying. Ask Benjamin Franklin. Kites get hit by lightning. Today’s Sydney Morning Herald
reveals deep divisions in the Liberal Party over IVF funding, centred
in the Prime Minsiter’s home divisision of New South Wales with a
Cabinet in Confidence letter from Helen Coonan to the PM that states:
“infertility is a health condition for which treatment is available,
not a lifestyle choice which society chooses to indulge”.