Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the weekend the state member for Hawkesbury, Stephen Pringle, was another victim of the extreme right-wing takeover of the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party—a member in his first term in parliament. It is the second contest in two months where a marauding extreme right wing has ridden roughshod over the branch membership and opposition leader Peter Debnam to install a candidate of its choosing. Last month, the Prime Minister’s friend Pru Goward was rejected in Epping, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Debnam asked her to contest the preselection. Ethnic branch stacking on a grand scale meant that Pru Goward could not win, even with Mr Debnam’s backing. Last month Mr Debnam declared:

All the sitting MPs have my total support and I’m working for them.

It appeared Mr Pringle had Mr Debnam’s support. He wrote a reference for his parliamentary colleague and telephoned preselectors on his behalf. Like in Epping, his apparent support counted for nothing. I say ‘apparent’ because Mr Pringle is not so sure that the support was genuine. In Mr Pringle’s words, the result of the Hawkesbury preselection shows one of two things, that Mr Debnam is either ‘lying or impotent’. Whichever is true, he says with some justification:

It does raise questions as to who is actually in charge of the party.

In the lead-up to the Epping ballot, operatives acting under the direction of the extreme right-wing powerbroker David Clarke stacked 130 members of the Lebanese Maronite community into the Cherrybrook branch. For the Hawkesbury contest, branch stacking was organised on an even grander scale. About 500 people were stacked into the Beaumont Hills branch to guarantee the preselection result. Once again, most of the extreme right-wing stacks were members of the Lebanese Maronite community. Once again, extreme right-wing operative and reported bankrupt David Baynie was a key player. Mr Pringle has told the press that he never stood a chance, observing that:

The Beaumont Hills branch was very difficult to counter when there were a large number of people with the same family name involved.

He says that he rang large numbers of preselectors and that:

... they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. They had no idea about the preselection, no idea about the Liberal Party.

It is not just the moderates who are concerned about the outcome of this preselection contest. The Australian Hotels Association expressed its concern about the ‘radical and bizarre views’ of the extreme right-wing candidate. It is clear that the agenda of the extreme right-wing powerbroker David Clarke did not start at Epping and has not ended at Hawkesbury. A party source has told the Australian Financial Review:

It is a takeover of the entire Liberal Party. John Brogden, Patricia Forsyth [were forced out], Peta Seaton has retired under pressure, Andrew Tink has left. Pringle was the next in line.

The extreme right-wing takeover of the New South Wales Liberal Party has been long in planning and brutal in execution.

Seventeen months ago, the secretary of the Hawkesbury branch warned the Director of the New South Wales Liberal Party:

... the Clarke faction is signing up members from the far right in order to frustrate and unseat a sitting Liberal member.

The warning was prescient. It was ignored. Other moderates are now in the sights of the extreme right wing. It is clear that Senator Marise Payne will soon join Stephen Pringle on the roster of moderates being brought undone by extreme right-wing thuggery. I understand that the head of Bruce Baird, the member for Cook, is now on the chopping block. I have worked closely with Senator Payne and the member for Cook on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. I have had a regard for both of them and can vouch for their contribution. No doubt if they had not been New South Wales moderate Liberals they would have been ministers and, in the case of the member for Cook, as a former Deputy Premier, the Speaker. The state leader, a good chunk of the state party and even members of this parliament are living in fear of right-wing extremists that have, sadly, taken over the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party. It is time the Prime Minister took on the extremists that want to expunge the last vestiges of liberalism from the New South Wales Liberal Party.