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

Could I, at the outset, associate myself with your kind remarks regarding the distinguished service of John Craig.

This weekend the Liberal Party will preselect its candidate for Epping at the upcoming New South Wales state election. This grubby contest has exposed an endemic corruption of process in the state Liberal Party. In the lead-up to this weekend’s ballot, party operatives acting under the direction of right-wing powerbroker David Clarke have stacked at least 130 members of the Lebanese Maronite community into the Cherrybrook branch. So organised has this stacking been that the Cherrybrook branch accounts for at least 40 per cent of the branch vote in the preselection contest. What is more, to guarantee the stack’s success the right-wing controlled state executive of the New South Wales Liberal Party rode roughshod over party rules to ensure new members of the Cherrybrook branch would vote in the preselection ballot.

The right-wing faction is backing Greg Smith, the New South Wales Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions. The leading moderate candidate is Pru Goward, the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner. Not content with corrupting the ballot, the dominant right-wing faction has dirtied up the preselection contest by leaking information designed to damage Ms Goward. Today the Daily Telegraph highlights the fact that Ms Goward lives on a farm at Yass, 300 kilometres from the electorate she wants to represent. Right-wing operatives are pushing the line that Ms Goward is a ‘blow-in’ with no commitment to the electorate. Of course, it has not all been one-way traffic. Today’s Financial Review says:

Ms Goward’s supporters have stepped up a smear campaign against Mr Smith, alleging his sympathies lie with the Labor Party because he was a member of the party in the 1970s and appointed to his job by the Carr government.

This preselection contest has strong federal implications. The most obvious is that the corrupt practices at play in Epping will impact on future federal preselection contests. For that reason, federal Labor has called on the Prime Minister to take action against the rorters in his own New South Wales state division. Not unexpectedly, he has failed to act. Demonstrating the power wielded by the right-wing faction, the Prime Minister has not even extended public support to Ms Goward. Ms Goward is a friend of the Prime Minister and she is married to the Prime Minister’s biographer, yet not one word has he uttered in support of her candidacy.

Indeed, when it was reported that he was backing her early in the preselection contest, the Prime Minister wrote a letter to the editor denying it. Not only did he deny he was canvassing for Ms Goward but he denied that anyone else was canvassing on his behalf. It is no wonder that on 23 June the Daily Telegraph reported that this preselection contest has:

... exposed the party’s factional underbelly and Mr Howard’s inability to deal with the NSW branch.

Some senior members of the government have not been so reticent about involving themselves in the Epping contest. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations has taken time out from shafting Australian workers to throw his support behind the Right’s Mr Smith. The minister does not live in the state, let alone the electorate, yet he has intervened in this contest. Consequently, Mr Smith’s preselection material is now emblazoned with the minister’s personal endorsement.

The Epping preselection has been a dirty fight. It has not just involved ethnic branch stacking and the manipulation of party rules. Ms Goward has been offered inducements to withdraw from the fight, including right wing backing to knock off Senator Marise Payne from New South Wales from a winnable spot on the Liberal Party Senate ticket. Just a few weeks ago, Mr Smith, in his capacity as Acting Director of Public Prosecutions, was asked to reverse a prosecutorial decision by state opposition leader Peter Debnam and Senator Bill Heffernan—two individuals with the capacity to determine Mr Smith’s fate in this weekend’s ballot. It is the sort of behaviour the government would rail against in the Pacific. But at home and inside the New South Wales Liberal Party it is a different story.

It is likely Mr Smith will win preselection for Epping this weekend on the strength of the right wing stack. Maybe a grubby deal will be done and the result will be no different. Whatever happens, the Prime Minister must act to clean out the corruption in his party.