The faceless men.

"Tony Abbott’s New South Wales party division is paralysed by a bruising fight over preselection reforms, with members in some of the safest Liberal seats refusing to volunteer at the upcoming state election campaign.

The former Howard government minister Jackie Kelly, who has resigned from the party in protest, cited “the corrosive control that self interested lobbyists have over the NSW Liberal Party and how yet again reform will stall after the next election” in a letter to the state director.

Kelly told Guardian Australia disenchantment with the factional control of the NSW state executive and the stalled reform process had caused many party members in western Sydney to “down tools”.

Liberal sources described bleeding party membership in blue ribbon seats on Sydney’s north shore, where the prime minister, the NSW premier Mike Baird and many state and federal cabinet ministers hold seats. In one Sydney north shore branch, 80 out of 200 members have not renewed their party membership in the past 12 months.

Critics such as Kelly and long time campaigner John Ruddick say the Icac revelations were a natural outcome of concentrating power in the hands of a few factional powerbrokers and lobbyists. "


http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/17/new-south-wales-liberals-g...

This is a specific example of the growing disillusionment with the major parties in general. The NSW Liberals in particular have been troubled by links to slush funds and dubious dealings surrounding these. The case for fundamental political reform is pretty clear.

Its time wrote on Oct 17^th, 2014 at 9:55am:

Swag has probably been ignoring the Liberal Party corruption thread (he hasn't posted in it).

So it's not really surprising that he's not aware of all the corruption allegations doing the rounds of the media.

Swagman wrote on Oct 18^th, 2014 at 7:59am:


why wouldn't he be?
Did you think liberal politicians were different to other politicians?

In case you lot haven't noticed, the consistent factor is NSW.  all this corruption occurs there. all the time.  forever.  WA has had WA Inc and QLD has Joh.  it happens from time to time, but in NSW it seems to be ALWAYS.

Bam wrote on Oct 18^th, 2014 at 2:03pm:


I don't know how you do that.  there have been plenty of ideas but none workable.  The only real solution is to ban UNREPORTED donations and then to regularly scrutinise the use of political favours.

John Smith wrote on Oct 18^th, 2014 at 7:27pm:



We can't have public funding elections the government might have to raise taxes to paid for it and you know how the righties  complain about them paying too much taxes now