Before the ball starts rolling too far on
this whole “it was the evil Right’s fault,” let’s get a few things straight.

Alex Hawke hates the media. He’s not the
sort of politico who associates with them, either in public or in private. Why?
Well, look at the way he was portrayed in The Monthly, and you’ll understand.
To claim that he was backgrounding anyone is a nonsense. It is just not
his style.

Next, let’s look at the ‘Hard Right.’ David
Clarke controls a grand total of two votes in the party room, namely his own
and that of Charlie Lynn. Yep, two controllable votes. And this is the political
juggernaut everyone fears?

That kind of leaves 23 others who might
have a say in the leadership. There is another group of people who are broadly
conservative and hate the Group, including Anthony Roberts (whom the Left
consider a traitor), Malcolm Kerr (who the Left are trying to roll in his
preselection), BOF (who wants to get rid of Left deadwood), Peter Debnam (who is
in the Left’s sights for his role in the Turnbull/King fiasco) and Chris
Hartcher (who was done over by the Group and has never forgiven them).

So why not Barry for Opposition
Leader? It has been claimed that MPs were threatened with losing
preselection. But this just doesn’t ring true. The simple fact is that the five
duds (Forsythe, Ryan, Humpherson, Hopwood and Pringle) have always been on the
hit list. Barry could not possibly do anything to save them – even presuming
that he wanted to do so, which is a pretty big ‘if’.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that the Left offered to back O’Farrell,
but only on the condition that he do everything possible to save these
no-hopers. O’Farrell knew that the Right would support Debnam, and that to save
the dud Lefties would require putting his leadership on the line and massive
factional disputes in the party, and as a good Liberal who actually wants to
win in 2007, he was not prepared to pay that price.

Ironically, O’Farrell’s decision now seals
the fate of these five – and maybe more. The Left just can’t come back – but it
should be remembered that even if these five go, the Left will still control a
third of the Parliamentary Party!

The broad Right has exposed the fact that
the emperor has no clothes. Nobody in the media complained when the Group
went through the Party in the mid 1980s and rolled out existing members. So
why the wailing and gnashing of teeth now?

As for Steketee’s article
in The Australian – what a joke. Sure an old Leftie like Steketee really has
the wellbeing of the Liberal Party close to his heart – NOT! And I love the way
that he assumes – without presenting any evidence – that Hawke was the leaker,
despite an explicit public denial by Hawke. Unsubstantiated rumours, anyone?
Why doesn’t he ask the obvious question: why has the Right been so successful?
The obvious answer is that they have exposed the REAL policy agenda of the Left
and tapped into a wellspring of genuine conservatism in the NSW Division, and
NSW more generally.

NSW ain’t Victoria. There
was no ‘Split’ in the ALP in the 1950s up here. Nobody ever lost a vote in NSW
for being “too conservative,” as Bob Carr admirably demonstrated to
the chagrin of his own Left.

Anyone heard of John Howard? He works in
NSW.

Anyone heard of John Fahey, Peter Collins,
Kerry Chikarovski or John Brogden?

They don’t.