NSW Liberal Party in turmoil after failing to nominate candidates for local elections
Alexandra Smith is the state political editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. She says the liberal party will pay for the missed opportunity, at the polls.
Transcript
00:00We have a situation where there will be local government elections next month, where there
00:06will be a major party largely missing in some of the key local government areas. Northern
00:11Beaches is one of those, Shoalhaven down in the south of the state. Northern Beaches will
00:15not have one single Liberal candidate contesting a seat for that council area. And it is just
00:22incredible that it all comes down to a pretty simple mistake, really. Forms were just not
00:26submitted on time. The deadline was missed. The other parties, you know, whether it would
00:31be Labor, the Greens, they managed to get theirs in. But for whatever reason, the New
00:35South Wales Liberals failed. 140 candidates are missing from the ballot paper which was
00:40drawn yesterday. About 16 councils are impacted. It's an absolute debacle and chaotic and a
00:46big problem for the New South Wales Liberals. A problem for the New South Wales Liberals,
00:50but also for their supporters as well, because you're going into these local council elections.
00:55If you're a traditional Liberal supporter, you're not going to be represented anymore.
00:59Of course, you will not have a Liberal candidate to vote for, for example, in the Northern
01:03Beaches, but plenty of other wards and other councils as well. It's an extraordinary situation
01:07that in one ward in Penrith, it will just be Labor that doesn't even have to go to the
01:13election because there are enough candidates, Labor candidates, just to fill that ward because
01:17no Liberals were nominated as part of this debacle.
01:22Alexandra, it makes you question how democracy works. The whole point of a democracy is being
01:27able to choose who should represent you. Is there any kind of talk that there could be
01:33some way of allowing these candidates to get on the ballot?
01:35The only way you could do that is through legislation, because we have very tight rules
01:39around the New South Wales Electoral Commission, and rightly so. The Labor government would
01:44have to agree to move legislation, and they're not going to be wanting to do that. Not to
01:50damage democracy, but it would set a very bad precedent, wouldn't it? It would say we're
01:56willing to move the goalpost if you can't get your house in order to get simple forms
02:00in on time, so that will not happen. We will see an election next month with Liberals missing
02:05from a lot of local government areas.
02:07Have you spoken to any of these Liberals?
02:10Yeah. They are just, they're absolutely devastated. Some of them are sitting, sitting councillors
02:17already. They lose their job. They don't get to run again. The Liberals were very bullish
02:22in the Northern Beaches, and they thought that they would get their deputy mayor, a
02:26female, up. She's not even going to have a chance to run, let alone be mayor.
02:31So she loses her job.
02:32She loses her job.
02:33She might have grounds to take action.
02:35Well, I did. We have asked about that, but of course it's pretty hard to prove that,
02:39first of all, you were going to be elected, you know. So they probably don't have a lot
02:43of grounds, except to just be incredibly angry at the Liberal Party and their organisational
02:48arm of the party they represent.
02:50So the director of the Liberal Party, Richard Shields, sacked last night. So they called
02:57an extraordinary, urgent state executive meeting. State executives is the decision-making body
03:03of the Liberals. They're the only body that has the power to sack the state director.
03:07So the state director is basically, you know, the CEO of the party. Unanimously they resolved
03:11that he had to go. That's not surprising. I mean, the buck stops with him, of course.
03:18But I don't think that will be the end of the infighting. There's so much anger at the
03:22party, you know, within both the parliamentary party, the organisational wing. Like, going
03:29into local government elections, but of course a federal election, and we have key by-elections
03:34also in New South Wales. Dominic Perrottet resigned, so did Matt Keane. So we've got
03:39two by-elections in October that the Liberals have to contest. It's completely, you know,
03:44it has far more broad impacts than just the local government elections as well.
03:49Just one other thought, Alexandra. There would have been money donated to people's campaigns.
03:53There would be funds around councillors or people standing for Protective to be a councillor.
03:59I mean, do they give the money back?
04:01Well, I presume they would have to. I mean, there are corflutes up with people's faces
04:06on them who will not be running in the election. There's a lot of that sort of stuff that will
04:10have to be ironed out in the coming days and weeks. Of course, they're going to have to
04:14appoint a new state director immediately because they need to get on with running the local
04:21elections and they still have about 300 candidates across the state running, so it's not completely,
04:26you know. But yeah, there's a lot of organisational things that will have to be sorted out really
04:31quickly at the same time when all this bloodletting is going on within the party.
04:35I asked you if you'd spoken to any councillors. Of course, you have. But what about the people
04:38in these constituencies? Are you getting many readers contact you and say...
04:42Absolutely.
04:43Right.
04:44Inundated, yeah. Because people like you spoke about the issue of democracy. People feel
04:48that they've been denied a right to vote for a particular, you know, party and of course
04:52there are many people that would have voted for the Liberals, of course. And now they're
04:57very angry and they're wondering where their vote goes. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised
05:01if we see a high number of donkey votes at this election because, you know, people are
05:06angry and perhaps say, you know, they don't want to vote for... well, they won't vote
05:10for Labor if they're a Liberal voter. Perhaps it'll help the independence but it'll make
05:14this, dare I say it, this local government elections far more interesting than it may
05:17have otherwise been.
05:18Looking forward to it. Alexandra Smith, thank you so much.