The Liberal Partys faction problem Inside Story

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

13/07/2015 3:31 am

1539 words

The Liberal Partys faction problem

6 JULY 2015

Its not just Labor that suffers

from the inordinate inuence
of a NSW right wing, writes
Norman Abjorensen
Right:
Right is might: former prime minister John Howard
(left) and his wife Janette Howard being presented
with honorary life memberships of the Liberal
Party by prime minister Tony Abbott and NSW
premier Mike Baird (right) during the partys NSW
state council last month. David Moir/AAP Image

ne of the enduring myths of Australian politics is that only the Labor Party has factions, and

the unhealthy tribalism that often goes with them. Wrong: the Liberal Party is just as factional,
albeit in a looser sense, and just as tribal, if not more so.
Labors best-known faction, the NSW Right, has passed into folklore as a ruthless (yet sometimes
dazzlingly inept) political machine a cross between Tammany Hall and the Maa. But the same
states Liberal right wing (itself made up of sub-factions) ies under the radar, except when its
excesses occasionally hit the headlines. It is a formidable, if occasionally unpredictable, inuence
on the Abbott government, anchoring it rmly to the right.
With the possible exception of the partys permanently cleaved branch in South Australia, no other
part of the Liberal family is so engaged in seemingly endless civil war as the NSW branch. Because
of its size, its machinations inevitably have consequences beyond the state. And it is as obsessively
tribal as any political clan.
In many ways, the NSW branch is the odd one out in the conservative constellation, its history
different from that of its conservative allies elsewhere. Its path of evolution, owing in part to the
dominance of free traders in nineteenth-century New South Wales, has been shaped more recently
by its long years out of ofce in a natural Labor state. The experience of opposition has fostered an
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intensely tribal outgroup mentality, with tendencies towards extremism. The closest thing
Australia has had to a quasi-fascist movement was the New Guard, a NSW-based organisation with
deep roots in Sydneys business and military establishment in the 1930s.
In Victoria, where it was an integral part of the establishment, the Liberal Party was more
electorally successful. It was here that the Deakinite strain of liberalism emerged, resulting in farreaching changes to factory laws, the worlds rst minimum wage, and other progressive reforms.
Tariff protection, with benets for manufacturer and worker alike, was an integral part of the
package.
This social compact was never wholly accepted in New South Wales. The old free-trade ideological
strands of George Reid, a one-time NSW premier who was prime minister in 190405, never
entirely vanished from Australian liberalism, despite the adoption of trade protection in the rst
decade after Federation.
New South Wales was the most reluctant of the states to come on board when Robert Menzies, a
Victorian, sought to merge various conservative and anti-Labor groups into a new Liberal Party in
the mid 1940s. In New South Wales, not only were its conservative fragments more politically
diverse than elsewhere, but there was also a broad antipathy towards Menzies, as popularised in
the slogan Youll never win with Menzies. History proved that to be one of the more spectacular
misjudgements in Australian political history.
Even after Menzies swept to a resounding victory in 1949, it was soon evident that a free-trade
cave existed within the new governments ranks, its members drawn exclusively from New South
Wales. This group opposed Menziess acceptance of the mixed economy, as manifested, for
example, in the two-airline policy, which protected the duopoly of the government-owned Trans
Australian Airlines and the privately owned Ansett.
New South Wales continued to be isolated within the party during the seemingly united Menzies
years. With the elevation of another Victorian, heir apparent Harold Holt, to the deputy leadership
in 1956, the NSW cave was effectively marginalised. Evidence of an ongoing anti-NSW sentiment
in the wider party can be found in a remark by longtime Menzies minister Sir Alexander Downer
(father of the Howard-era minister, also Alexander), who went to London as high commissioner in
1964 but kept a close watch on developments in Australia. When John Gortons prime ministership
was faltering, a young Liberal MP, Neil Brown, found himself in London being interrogated by
Downer. You must promise me one thing, Mr Brown. Never let the prime ministership fall into
vulgar, Sydney commercial hands.
In 1971, though, a party-room coup by Billy McMahon toppled prime minister John Gorton and the
Victorians lost control of the party. The leadership returned to Victoria during Malcolm Frasers

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years, but in the thirty years since 1985 a Sydneysider has led the Liberal Party for all but two years.
(The sole exceptions were Andrew Peacock, 198990, and Alexander Downer for eight months
during 199495.) In that time, rst John Howard and then Tony Abbott have reshaped the party in
ways that would have delighted George Reid but dismayed Downer senior. They have also
signicantly increased the inuence of the NSW branch.

ith John Howards ascension to the national leadership, the insular, tribal character of

NSW conservatism was brought to the broader Liberal Party; and that shift has persisted to this
day, with little sign of weakening. Howards worldview was profoundly shaped by his experiences
growing up in a state where Labor held power for an unbroken span of almost a quarter of a
century. Labor had inuence not just in the NSW government, which it ran with the trade unions,
but also through extensive webs of patronage in local government, the churches, the legal
profession, the judiciary and business. For Howard, it was the enemy, pure and simple, and it had
to be defeated; it was not just a political opponent, its very culture was toxic and needed to be
eliminated from the body politic and public life in general. Labor, in Howards view, looked after its
own, and his side would do the same.
Opposing Labor, in a tribal sense, means not resembling Labor in any way. The Liberal factions are
also tribal in a very real sense: you are either in or out. The basic argument, little changed down
the years, is that the moderates believe the right makes the party unelectable because soft Labor
voters need to be won over, whereas the right, in its various sub-tribes, views any accommodation
with Labor-style policies with deep suspicion, and as akin to apostasy. Elements of this
fundamentalist rhetoric pepper Tony Abbotts utterances, especially in regard to security issues.
Interestingly, self-styled conservatives, or those strongly identied with the right, have been
conspicuously absent from leadership of the state party in New South Wales, which has usually
come to power after periods of Labor misrule. Bob Askin in 1965, Nick Greiner in 1988 (and his
successor John Fahey) and Barry OFarrell in 2011 were all moderates. So too is Mike Baird, the
current incumbent, but he owes his elevation to the rights decision to block Gladys Berejiklian,
who was not just a moderate but also a factional warrior. Baird has since sought to distance himself
from the right, having dumped two factional heavies from his cabinet.
The NSW branch exerts a powerful hold over the Abbott government. Speaker Bronwyn Bishop, a
former NSW Liberal branch president, is as tribal as they come and scarcely bothers to conceal her
disdain for those on the other side of the chamber, whom she regularly ejects. As one Labor MP
said to me, This is not political. It is visceral. She hates us and everything we stand for. Scott
Morrison, a former NSW state director once surprisingly regarded as a moderate, is the architect of
the hardline stance against asylum seekers. And of course there is the prime minister himself,
rigorously hardline against anything even mildly progressive, be it renewable energy or same-sex
marriage.
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Behind the frontlines are the redoubtable conservative senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, the
most inuential activist of the Christian right (Cory Bernardi notwithstanding), and another
former NSW Liberal president, Bill Heffernan, who is reputed to be very persuasive among Liberals,
especially newcomers.
The NSW far right, though subject to frequent splits and realignments, is represented by the
Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke, whose extreme views on a range of topics led shock jock and
Liberal supporter Alan Jones to memorably refer to him as a cancer on the Liberal Party. In 2005
Hawke nailed his conservative colours to the mast, claiming, Nobody joins the Liberal Party to be
left-wing. If you stand for compulsory student unionism, drug-injecting rooms and lowering the
[homosexual] age of consent, you can choose the Greens, Labor or the Democrats. Similar
sentiments in his maiden speech, after he entered parliament in 2007, drew effusive praise from
Tony Abbott
Conservative in one sense, this faction is also constantly looking to expand its power. At the
moment, the NSW right is working on a plan, drawn up by a panel headed by John Howard, for a
plebiscite model of direct election of Liberal preselection candidates in the House of
Representatives and the state Legislative Assembly. The proposed model would effectively limit
the power of the NSW Liberal state executive, where the right lacks a majority, to override the
wishes of branch members to install candidates.
The move masquerades as grassroots democracy, but in fact panders to branch stacking, interestgroup capture and local populism. It has implications far beyond New South Wales and could once
again refashion the Liberal Party.

NORMAN ABJORENSEN
Norman Abjorensen is a Visiting Fellow in the Policy and
Governance Program at the Crawford School of Public Policy at
the ANU. He is the author of three books on the Liberal Party
and its leaders. His book on prime ministerial exits, The Manner
of Their Going, will be published later this year.

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