New South Wales voters head to the polls in local government elections in just a few weeks. The outcomes will almost certainly result in a red-green wave. Not, though, because either Labor or the Greens are massively popular with NSW voters. Instead, a mind-boggling stuff-up by the NSW Liberal party leadership is to blame.
They forgot to lodge hundreds of nominations before the NSW Electoral Commission deadline. About 140 candidates and sitting councillors will simply be unable to run. To make it worse, it is believed head office ordered anxious candidates against putting in last-minute submissions to run as independents after they had raised concerns over the looming cut off.
Even more pathetically, the Liberal state leadership then begged Labor premier Chris Minns to intervene with emergency legislation. Rightfully, Minns refused to save the Liberals from their own incompetence.
Yes, they really screwed up that monumentally.
Many are blaming NSW Liberal president Don Harwin for being too obsessed with internal ‘wheeling and dealing’ and playing insider games, instead of attending to mundane but critical details, such as... I don’t know... getting paperwork in on time. Harwin has already tried to save his own arse by throwing state director Richard Shields under the bus, but a furious federal party leadership isn’t about to let the buck stop there.
Tony Abbott has called NSW Liberal president Don Harwin’s position “untenable”, demanding his exit for his role in the state party’s council nomination debacle as a threat of federal intervention loomed. The former Liberal prime minister’s call came as the party abandoned what had been described as a “fanciful” last-ditch legal attempt to let it register candidates.
Mr Abbott said on Tuesday there was something “badly wrong” with the state party after last week’s preselection failure left 140 candidates, including 48 sitting councillors, off ballots ahead of September’s local elections.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of the state branch’s incompetence.
Earlier this week, Mr Abbott called for a federal takeover of the embattled NSW branch, arguing it had become an “insiders’ club”.
“Something is badly wrong when the party has fewer than 10,000 members in a state of eight million people,” he said.
“A successful political party can’t remain a closed shop or an insiders’ club. The main thing is ensuring that the NSW party is ready to do its job to get rid of a really bad government.”
For his part, Harwin is resorting to unconvincing, pathetic threats against the NSWEC.
On Sunday, Mr Harwin said the party would have “no other option but to pursue legal avenues” if the NSW Electoral Commission refused to provide an extension, but the body has stood firm in its refusal to do so.
As it should: the law is the law, and the NSWEC is an independent statutory body. It’s neither the NSWEC’s or Premier Minns’ job to fix up such a colossal piece of dipshittery.
The absolute clownshow in NSW is just the peak stupidity of state Liberal branches that continue to let themselves be dragged down by weak, wet, incompetent leaders and insider apparatchiks. Such as the pathetic John Pesutto in Victoria, a political jellyfish who has just lost the first round of the defamation suit brought against him by popular ‘maverick’ Moira Deeming, for smearing her as a “Nazi”.
With opponents like the Victorian and NSW state Liberals, state Labor governments surely can’t believe their undeserved luck.
