On Tuesday night, as outgoing Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells lobbed a grenade at Scott Morrison, the prime minister’s legal team was hastily putting together an application to have the High Court hear another dispute flowing from the Liberal Party’s factional civil war.
The application was rejected, but the lawyers will still duel it out in the NSW Court of Appeal tomorrow. The legal case provides a crucial backdrop to Fierravanti-Wells’ savaging of Morrison. The fight is particularly murky. It turns on the validity of the Liberal Party federal executive’s move to temporarily dissolve the state division and install a committee to save Immigration Minister Alex Hawke, Environment Minister Sussan Ley and MP Trent Zimmerman from preselection. The committee consisted of Morrison, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and former party president Christine McDiven.
An initial legal challenge was brought against that move by state executive member Matt Camenzuli, on the basis it breached the party’s constitution. Morrison’s legal team wanted the matter expedited to the High Court, in part because losers in the Supreme Court would probably appeal there anyway.
A ruling from the nation’s top court would resolve things quickly, especially given a judgment could jeopardise preselections and further delay appointing candidates in key marginal seats. On the other hand, it could drag out proceedings until after the election, allowing Morrison’s picks to be effectively locked in.
So what’s the connection to Fierravanti-Wells?
The case is just the latest skirmish in a long-running factional war pitting the senator’s hard-right faction against the centre-right, run by Morrison’s factional ally Hawke. In NSW at least, the moderates have increasingly worked with the hard-right to squeeze out the Morrison-Hawke faction.
Before the last election, the hard-right pushed for adoption of the Warringah Rules, championed by former prime minister Tony Abbott, which would give members greater control over the preselection process. That push was furiously opposed by Hawke and his faction, who wanted to place limits on party members’ votes.
While Abbott’s initial proposal won support from the rank and file, a series of compromises saw it diluted, giving the party machinery considerable sway in picking candidates.
With all that in the background, the Liberals struggled to preselect candidates this time. Until Tuesday, accusations that Morrison and Hawke had filibustered the preselection process so that the federal executive would have to intervene and install desirable candidates were largely anonymous.
Fierravanti-Wells used her speech as a chance to make them public. Morrison and his “consigliere” Hawke had “contrived a crisis” in NSW, she said.
“Hawke, as his representative on state executive for months and months, failed to attend nomination review committee meetings to review candidates, thereby holding up preselections. Spurious arguments were mounted to justify the unjustifiable. The constitution was trashed,” Fierravanti-Wells said.
With that assessment, Fierravanti-Wells joins the long list of colleagues — Malcolm Turnbull, Barnaby Joyce, Julia Banks, (allegedly) Gladys Berejiklian and more — to have called Morrison’s character into question.
But the factional subtext behind her words are important. They reveal the frustration of watching a faction putting an internal turf war over electoral success. It’s left a result where neither side can back down. Morrison is determined to get his candidates. Camenzuli, who has deep pockets, is determined to fight them in court every step of the way. Those spurned, like Fierravanti-Wells, are willing to go off.
What’s also telling is that nobody seems able to turn down the temperature. John Howard was wheeled out yesterday to accuse the PM’s critics of being consumed by personal grievance, but even he delivered a pointed message by maintaining his support for rank and file voting and swift preselections.
Winnable seats like Hughes, Warringah and Eden-Monaro are still without candidates. Yesterday Morrison said he wouldn’t call an election this weekend because the government still had work to do. Right now, his biggest task is putting out spot fires and getting his party’s shit together.
Eden-Monaro is not a ‘Winnable seat”!! As one senior Liberal official said this morning “We are wasting our time – the bushfires have killed it for Morrison down here”
The Bega by-election, which admittedly does not include Queanbeyan and is more confined to the coast, should offer a pretty clear picture that the LNP is on a hiding to nothing in Eden-Monaro. The bushfires did it. Posters are appearing around Narooma showing Morrison in an Hawaiian shirt with the slogan “I don’t hold a hose”.
John Howard was wheeled out yesterday… Noticed he was also wheeled out in SA before the recent state election. Didn’t seem to have helped the SA Libs at all.
(I hope) There’s further direct parallels between the situation in SA and the coming National election:
A> Shambolic state of the State Liberal party for around 6 months in the lead up to the election (sitting members suspended from the party until ICAC investigations could be concluded, members resigning to become independents, new memberships suspended after a takeover attempt by pentecostals signing up enmasse – in direct contravention of their democratic process (when will these people understand “secular” and “god given right” don’t coexist)).
B> Premier Marshall falling lockstep behind our esteemed PMs “everyone gets Covid for Christmas” opening (before which, the state had been hugely successful in controlling Covid with very limited restrictions).
The PM stayed well away from campaigning (unlike John Howard) – I’m still not sure if it was to distance himself from what they saw coming (not that many forsaw it, certainly not the extent), or if he was asked to stay away.
Maybe. In the SA election the Libs won 16 seats in the lower house. Without Howard how many would they have won? The same? Fewer? More? There’s no way to find out what would have happened if Howard had stayed at home.
Seriously Kishor, do you think he can? i mean the guy is walking in a mine field and each step he takes triggers a mine, and he yells out ‘ i found one’ that is how inept he is.
Ninja Turtle ( Howard) and Mad Monk ( Abbott) both as useless as t**ts on a bull!
Those latter two signify in one’s mind what is wrong with contemporary but old Australia and the Liberal Party, when they seem more loyal to the risible white Christian nationalist ‘Anglosphere’, with Howard describing Brexit and Trump as ‘tremendous’ and globetrotting Abbott popping up at various Koch Network linked think tank presentations?
Surely ‘teats’ would pass even this madBot?
Just another example of a different kind of corruption of democracy. The thing I AM surprised about is the ineptness around it not being sorted out already. They are completely shooting themselves in the foot. Hmmm hang on a minute, surprised at ineptness? On second thought, I don’t think so!
Why should anyone be surprised at this mess. Nikki Sava summed it up perfectly when she said “ Morrison has a habit of allowing problems to become crises before mishandling them”.