Liberal candidates have been selected and endorsed in nine NSW seats following months of party infighting and factional brawling. The selections were long overdue, with campaigning well underway in many seats and a federal election imminent.
The choices were made by a committee made up of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and former federal Liberal Party president Chris McDiven. This committee was appointed by the Liberal federal executive in lieu of the normal process that would see grassroots NSW Liberal members make the decisions.
- ABC News, 2nd Apr 2022
I think that the electorate as a whole has had a gutful of the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. Almost certainly the Morrison Government is facing down the barrel of electoral wipeout and while I do not think that it will be as bad as 90-55 as the polls have been suggesting for months (because there will be an attempt to rehabilitate the Liberal Party, by the Murdoch Press, Nine Ent Co, and Seven West Media), I still think that the Labor Party will hold government with at least 80 seats.
The previous excuse as to why the the Liberal Party hasn't yet made its preselections for the various seats in New South Wales, was that the Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke, was otherwise unavailable to attend meetings to review candidates. The fact that the Federal Liberal Party fought a court case through the NSW Court of Appeal re the validity of disenfranchising its own paid-up rank-and-file members is neither here nor there.
Alex Hawke himself has had to deal with another problem concerning the church that he attends, which itself has had a colossal failure of leadership and he has had to lie low because of the possible political fallout which may have engulfed both him and/or the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison).
This meddling in preselection, in which specifically the federal executive has trampled the state division, comes on the back of outgoing Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, dropping a final stream of invective, after she was dropped to the number 3 position on the probable NSW ticket for the Senate in assigned preferences. Not only did Ms Fierravanti-Wells personally accuse Scott Morrison of corrupting the state executive, but she also accused him of being a bully and then put on Hansard, a reminder of the process used for his own preselection for the Division of Cook - a process which involved telling fellow party members that his rival was rumoured to be "a Moslem" who would damage the party’s chances; in the wake of the Cronulla race riots.
In the interests of balance, I would like to see every single journalist and media outlet that wrote hit pieces on the alleged supposed bullying by members of the Labor Party of the late Senator Kimberley Kitching, also do an equal amount on Scott Morrison bullying Michael Towke out of the chance for the seat of Cook. No? Aw well.
Of course the question is why the federal executive feels the need to run roughshod over the top of the paid-up rank-and-file members of the party and the answer here is reasonably obvious: it doesn't trust the members. The federal executive which is made up of the Prime Minister, the Premier and a former federal Liberal Party president, doesn't trust the people who pay its upkeep to make decisions which they agree with. If I was a rank-and-file member of the Liberal Party, then the demonstration of that kind of disdain for the people who pay actual money to run the party, would be enough for me to cancel my membership immediately and forever. Why else would you join a political party, if not to have a say in the politics and policies of that party?
If there is any justice, then the rank-and-file members who form the grass roots of the Liberal Party, and who have been shamefully shamfully shafted by Morrison and Alex Hawkes’s bullying intervention, should now encourage the candidates who they wanted to represent them to run as Independents, and get behind them.
Although we don't actually know when the 2022 election will be called, the last possible date for a normal election is on 21st May.
The last possible dates for the writs to be issued for a normal House and half-Senate election are:
11th Apr - for 14th May
18th Apr - for 21st May
With the federal election expected to be called imminently, that means that the nomination process is urgent because nominations for candidates close 10 days after writs are issued. The seats which as far as I am aware which still need to be written off are:
Grayndler - ALP - +47.6% (Albanese's seat - ludicrously safe)
Warringah - IND - +14.5% (very safe)
Parramatta - ALP - +7.0%
Greenway - ALP - +5.6%
Eden-Monaro - ALP - +0.8%
North Sydney - Lib - -19.1% (very safe)
Hughes - Lib - -19.8% (very safe)
Farrer - Lib - -26.6% (very safe)
Mitchell - Lib - -37.3% (very safe)
That percentage is the swing required towards the Liberal Party if they want to win the seat. In some cases, they just not bothered to post a candidate because they probably think that the seat is unwinnable and in the case of the four seats that they hold here, they are probably looking for the right candidate because they will be given a soft landing via golden parachute.
In some respect, the fact that the federal executive is only made up of the Prime Minister, the Premier and a former federal Liberal Party president, speaks to the possibility that Morrison thinks that he might have a chance of winning the election and by dictating nine members he effectively remakes the party in his own image. The old is gone; the new has come. The former Liberal Party would be no more and what we would be left with, is the party of Morrison the almost autocrat.
I think that we can say that the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is running scared and more than likely has real fears for his own position. This is the structure which put him in the position of the Prime Minister and he personally very well knows just how quickly that structure can turn on its own. His predecessor Malcolm Turnbull, was a perfectly good Prime Minister who lost the job thanks to the festival of the thirsty knife and just as quickly as that knife falls asleep, it can be woken up again.
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