MARCH 2 – 8, 2024 | No. 489
NEWS
‘The vengeance approach’: Morrison leaves behind fractured party
As Scott Morrison leaves parliament for a defence consultancy, the Liberal Party in NSW is struggling with factional disputes where the right alone has split into at least 10 sub-factions.
Karen Middleton
When Scott Morrison finished his valedictory speech in parliament on Tuesday, not all of his colleagues turned up. Neither did they all line up for the traditional handshake or hug.
Former home affairs minister Karen Andrews was out the door in a little more than 30 seconds, having chosen to hear her former leader’s address seated half a chamber away, instead of in her usual place two seats in front of him, in the camera frame.
The retiring former prime minister thanked those who had given him personal, professional and political support throughout his parliamentary career and alluded to humility and self-reflection – something Coalition critics, of whom Andrews was most vociferous, have accused him of lacking.
“I leave this place appreciative and thankful, unburdened by offences and released from any bitterness that can so often haunt post-political lives,” Morrison said. “This is due to my faith in Jesus Christ which gives me the faith to both forgive but also to be honest about my own failings and shortcomings.”
Karen Andrews was publicly outraged when it emerged in August 2022 that, as prime minister, Morrison had himself secretly authorised as a kind of ghost minister in five extra portfolios – including her own – without the incumbents’ knowledge.
“This is just unacceptable,” Andrews said at the time, “and if this is the way that he is prepared to conduct himself without an adequate explanation, even though it is now going to be well past the time when such an explanation should have been made, then it is time for him to leave the parliament and look elsewhere for employment.”
Eighteen months on, that is what Morrison has now done. He joins international defence consultancy firm American Global Strategies, which was founded by former United States president Donald Trump’s security adviser Robert O’Brien and has former Trump secretary of state Mike Pompeo on its books. Morrison is also heading off on a US book tour promoting his memoir Plans for Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness. Former US vice-president Mike Pence has written the foreword.
Among those he leaves behind in both the federal and state Liberal arenas, a good many are struggling to feel as unburdened as he is by his legacy.
Former party member Michael Towke, who defeated Morrison in his original preselection contest for the seat of Cook ahead of the 2007 election before being subjected to a smear campaign that forced him to withdraw and allowed Morrison to be installed without a subsequent vote, says there are lessons for everyone across politics in the behaviours and methods that underpinned Morrison’s rise.
“It is now beyond doubt that a political system which allows someone like Morrison to become PM is in need of some reform,” Towke told The Saturday Paper this week. “Australians and our global allies deserve better leaders than they had in him.”
Morrison’s valedictory speech comes days after the annual general meeting of the NSW Liberal Party’s state council. The party there remains riven by ongoing factional infighting and power games.
Morrison’s centre-right has lost the status and influence that came from having the prime minister in its ranks. The right has split into at least 10 sub-factions, with shadow treasurer Angus Taylor most senior among them.
“Angus is a leader, I guess, of the NSW right,” one Liberal says. “It’s a faction of one.”
The moderates are also fighting among themselves in a bitter preselection battle for the seat of Gilmore.
“It’s World War III at the moment,” another NSW Liberal observes of that fight.
The formerly dominant centre-right and its key powerbroker, Alex Hawke, now find themselves having to horse-trade for protection from both sides.
A key member of Morrison’s political praetorian guard, who has occupied the back-row seat next to him in the post-2022 parliament, Hawke was linked to the most damaging factional controversies during the Morrison prime ministership.
He was also among the former and current colleagues whom his friend and ally chose to acknowledge in farewell.
At the state council meeting, Hawke survived an expulsion motion that sought to punish him for his alleged past factional activities.
Re-endorsed recently as the candidate in his seat of Mitchell, he secured his position after sections of the so-called “hard right” decided to back him following their previous moves to oust him. He then avoided being expelled from the party altogether when the powerful moderates voted as a bloc to defeat the motion.
The motion, seen by The Saturday Paper, said it did not seek to pass “any judgment concerning the truthfulness or otherwise” of the allegations.
“The existence of unresolved allegations against Mr Hawke and the associated negative publicity poses a serious risk to the Division’s prospects of success at the next federal election,” it read, adding that such allegations could damage the division’s “good reputation” and bring it into disrepute.
The motion’s chief proponent, right-winger Edwin Nelson of the Artarmon branch, told the meeting Hawke was responsible for delaying preselections before the 2022 election. He said that had cost some Liberal seats, jeopardised others and undermined campaigns in some that might have been winnable.
“Barry O’Farrell got struck out for a bottle of wine and Gladys [Berejiklian] got struck out for falling in love with the wrong person,” Nelson is understood to have told the meeting, referring to two former Liberal premiers who lost their jobs amid controversies. “Yet you’ve got Alex who stopped candidates being in the field and there’s no penalty.”
Responding, Hawke is understood to have told them: “There are some lies.”
He urged the meeting to abandon the move and instead unite to “get Peter Dutton elected”, warning such motions created “problems”.
Two other motions, seeking to expel senior NSW Liberal minister Paul Fletcher, and to reverse the expulsion of right-wing rebel Matthew Camenzuli, who mounted an unsuccessful High Court challenge against the 2022 preselections, also failed.
One conservative Liberal sums up the motive behind the motions. “Justice. Vengeance. I think there’s a lot of conservatives that take the vengeance approach.”
A moderate Liberal says the NSW party is a mess. “The centre-right is exploding everywhere… The right is splintering. The conservatives all hate each other more than they hate anyone else. That’s the dynamic going on right now.”
Alex Hawke’s power and influence were at their peak when Morrison was prime minister. As the prime minister’s representative on key party committees, Hawke was accused of deliberately stalling preselections despite the looming election as he fought to block right-wing challenges to himself and fellow MPs Sussan Ley and Trent Zimmerman.
Now deputy Liberal leader, Ley had supported Morrison in the 2018 Dutton-led leadership challenge that ended Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership. Turnbull dumped Ley from the ministry after she billed taxpayers for a Gold Coast trip on which she bought an apartment – something for which she subsequently apologised and repaid the cost – but Morrison reinstated her.
A key moderate, Zimmerman was also facing a right-wing challenge in his then seat of North Sydney.
Hawke was accused of failing to attend key meetings to progress the preselections, leading to delays that triggered federal intervention and allowed Morrison to hand-pick the candidates and reinstall all three. Hawke has previously denied orchestrating the delays.
It was these and other alleged factional activities that prompted the motion to have him expelled, initiated two years ago but held over again last year until this year’s meeting. Some suggest that having it coincide with elections for key party positions was convenient, to allow for cross-factional deals.
With the moderates backing Hawke against the motion, the centre-right lent its support to key moderate candidates for senior party positions currently being contested in the elections that will be decided on March 8.
While some moderates deny this was a “deal”, others say it was all part of the same negotiation.
Sources in the moderates and in one of the right sub-factions told The Saturday Paper this week Hawke was being protected and the centre-right sustained for political convenience. They said it served the purposes of both left and right to have a faction in the middle that could be marshalled in either direction.
“Absolutely,” one said. “That’s right.”
Morrison’s departure has sparked a new preselection fight for his prized safe seat in the Sutherland Shire, in Sydney’s south, ahead of what is expected to be an April byelection. Among three key candidates, veterans’ families advocate commissioner Gwen Cherne is running against the right-backed Simon Kennedy, a previously unsuccessful candidate for former prime minister John Howard’s old seat of Bennelong, and Sutherland mayor Carmelo Pesce, backed by the moderates.
Critics of successful businessman Pesce are querying his corporate interests and ties, questions his supporters say are motivated solely by politics. Critics of former McKinsey partner Kennedy highlight that he does not live locally and say he is being promoted as a future minister, rather than as a local representative.
On Thursday, John Howard advocated publicly for Cherne. Morrison has declined to endorse her directly, although she was his choice to be the Liberal candidate for Hughes in the 2022 election and he has said previously he would like to see a woman succeed him. The preselection will be decided on Monday.
Before that, this weekend’s Dunkley byelection in Melbourne’s southern fringe is shaping as a potentially pivotal moment at the federal level for both Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
With opinion polls showing Labor’s lead narrowing nationally, both the government’s reframed tax cuts and sharp opposition attacks on its handling of immigration have further complicated the contest in an election forced by the death from breast cancer of Labor incumbent Peta Murphy.
This week, both Albanese and Dutton sought to manage expectations.
“It’s a byelection, byelections are difficult,” Albanese told the Nine Network on Wednesday. “The average swing in a byelection away from the government since the Hawke government … is 7 per cent, 7.1 to be precise. We held the seat by 6.3 per cent.”
On Thursday, Dutton was also claiming underdog status, calling it “a tough ask”.
“Don’t forget, not that many months ago they won the seat of Aston with a 6 per cent swing to them,” Dutton told 2GB radio. “So this would be quite a turnaround.”
Dutton also challenged Albanese’s historical electoral statistics.
“Since the Second World War, the average swing against a government in a federal byelection is 3.6 per cent – about half of what the prime minister’s claiming,” Dutton said.
“The average swing in a byelection against a first-term government is one-and-a-half per cent and no first-term government has lost a seat in a byelection since World War II. They’re the facts.”
He added the average swing against a Labor government in a Victorian federal byelection was 0.7 per cent, not 7 per cent. He predicted a swing against Labor of about 3 per cent and accused Albanese of selectively quoting to downplay any sizeable swing.
Speaking in the chamber this week, Scott Morrison congratulated Anthony Albanese on his recent engagement to partner Jodie Haydon and wished them a happy life together, including after Albanese leaves office, adding he was bound to hope that day “hastens sooner rather than later”.
Morrison also acknowledged the man he beat in 2019, Bill Shorten, who was listening from the ministerial benches opposite.
“I wish you all well in your service of the national interest,” Morrison said. “Too often in this place, we confuse differences of policy with judgements about people’s intent and motives. This is not good for our polity. We may disagree but we need to honour the good intentions of all of us.”
Albanese paid tribute to Morrison’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and said he did not doubt all involved in the government at the time had “good intentions”.
Dutton thanked Morrison for his friendship – despite the 2018 leadership spill in which Morrison outflanked Dutton – and hailed him for helping to “bring our party together” after the 2022 defeat.
Earlier in the Liberal and Coalition party rooms, many of Morrison’s colleagues paid tribute to him. Those with ongoing resentment kept their views to themselves.
Morrison accepted Dutton’s invitation to address both meetings.
“Don’t be bitter,” he told his colleagues on Tuesday morning. “Bitterness will corrode you. Leave it all behind. I leave this place without bitterness.”
Morrison said he had spoken to former treasurer Josh Frydenberg and was speaking for them both when he wished the current leadership well. Some interpreted that as trying to reassure them he and Frydenberg had mended their relationship, which Frydenberg indicated in a recent ABC TV documentary had been damaged by the secret ministries affair.
Morrison’s parting advice was: “You want to win the next election? Work your arses off. No other way.”
While senior members of the Coalition’s Senate team joined Morrison’s wife, Jenny, and daughters Abbey and Lily on the floor of the House of Representatives for the valedictory, by lunchtime some of his fellow MPs had found somewhere else to be. Seating was rearranged to avoid empty chairs around him.
In the party room, he had pointedly told colleagues they didn’t have to come, that it wasn’t an obligation, that he would like to see them but only by choice. Nevertheless, the opposition whip sent a message to all Coalition MPs instructing them to attend.
Morrison’s speech was entertaining and at times emotional. He began and ended with praise for the shire and its people but also gave a short exposition on economic management and the threat of China and other totalitarian regimes.
Speaking of the US, he carefully mentioned both presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. He also slipped in a compliment to deputy prime minister and defence minister Richard Marles – a handy signal to his new employers that he is maintaining relationships across the aisle.
Having told the Nine newspapers he intended to emulate Julia Gillard in his post-politics life and limit his public interventions, Morrison dwelt barely at all on domestic politics.
Instead, he spoke about global security issues and his Pentecostal Christian faith – the areas in which his future lies.
The message was unmistakable: Scott Morrison’s colleagues may be still grappling with his time in office, but he has moved on.
