Not a rat's arse.

John Smith wrote on Sep 7^th, 2016 at 10:08am:


Please stick to the thread topic, Johnno ... there's a good lad.

Liberal MP Angus Taylor has urged Malcolm Turnbull to throw his support behind the democratic reform of the party's NSW branch, warning it needs to come now.

Speaking to Lateline, the Assistant Minister for Cities said the party could not afford to wait after its performance at July's election.

"The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wants to see an energised and a motivated membership base in NSW … we all want that," he said.

"And if that's the objective, my point is, democratic reform … giving more power to the membership base, the ability to vote for their local representatives, is the solution to that problem."

In a speech to the Sydney Institute last night, Mr Taylor warned the Liberal Party would face "oblivion" unless more power was given to its rank and file members to vote on preselection.

Earlier today, former prime minister John Howard told the National Press Club there was a view among Sydney Liberals that preselections in safe seats were "near to a closed shop".

He said he agreed with Mr Taylor that the preselection system needed to be altered, adding it would take the support of both the Prime Minister and NSW Premier Mike Baird to make it happen.

"It needs their influence to bring about change, it won't happen otherwise," he said.

'We can't wait for change': Taylor

In January, the ABC reported Mr Taylor was one of several MPs targeted by powerbrokers within the NSW Liberal branch, who were planning to unseat sitting members during preselection.

It was understood Mr Taylor received a phone call from Mr Turnbull at the time expressing his support.

When asked if Mr Turnbull had indicated whether he would help drive the reform in the NSW branch, Mr Taylor told Lateline the Prime Minister had "indicated to everybody … he wants an energised Liberal Party in NSW".

"With the support of people like John Howard — Arthur Sinodinos has made it very clear what his views are on this — Mike Baird and others, and the view that the Prime Minister wants to see an energised membership base, I'm confident that these changes should and will happen in time, and it needs to be relatively quickly," he said.

"We can't wait for this, we do need now a membership base who are readily out there barracking for us."

The Hume MP said he did not agree with former party member John Ruddick, who earlier told the ABC that Mr Turnbull had been a "strident campaigner against democratic reform".

"I don't think that's right," Mr Taylor said.

He also denied the problems within the NSW branch stemmed from a factional divide within the Liberal Party.

"In any organisation, there's groupings of people who work to further their interests," he said.

"The system's responsible for it. We have a system that allows power to be centralised … so the drawbridge can be brought up."

Bam wrote on Sep 7^th, 2016 at 10:23pm:


Its just a suggestion but perhaps they could get rid of the most corrupt political figure in history next to obied to give them even a shred of credibility , wtf is wrong with people , its a party full of lawyers and property developers, that alone should ring alarm bells they don't gaf about you

The NSW Liberal party is the last state division to change the rules to allow a greater say for members in party preselections.

After he was commissioned to examine the rules by the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, Howard made recommendations in 2014 to change the rules in favour of plebiscites.

Abbott supported the change but did not make any moves as leader. Since losing the leadership, he has campaigned loudly inside and outside the party room for reform.

Support for the change in the state division is generally held along factional lines, with supporters of Abbott favouring reform and supporters of Malcolm Turnbull, known as the moderates, against the rule change. The NSW state executive is controlled by the moderates.

The Victorian division changed its rules to allow plebiscites in 2010 and, after the former trade minister Andrew Robb retired, the former human rights commissioner Tim Wilson won against Georgina Downer, lawyer and daughter of the former foreign minister Alexander Downer.

Howard praised the preselections in other states and said both the Liberal party and the Labor party were less representative due to the lower memberships of political parties.

“I think the preselection systems in some of the other states are better and I’m not decrying the broad quality of people but, over time, membership of political parties is lower than it used to be,” Howard said.

“The Liberal party now – and I’m sure the same applies to the Labor party – is less representative of the generality of people who vote for the parties and I think we do need two fundamental reforms.

“We need fundamental reform giving everybody who belongs to the Liberal party in a particular area and has done so for a reasonable period of time … a vote in choosing the candidate.

“And the other thing, we should, instead of making it hard to establish party branches, we should make it easier.”

Taylor, who is the member for Hume, which stretches from northwest of Canberra to southwestern Sydney, said he had tried to establish a branch in Cowra but the application was rejected on the grounds it could be vulnerable to factional branch stacking.

“There was, in fact, zero prospect of that,” Taylor said. “Cowra is a long way from anywhere and if powerbrokers had shown interest in joining the Cowra branch the metaphorical shotguns would have come out.

“Those country Liberals would simply not have tolerated it. This was a turning point for me. At that point I switched to being a polite, private supporter of party reform to committing myself to bringing it about.”

NSW are the left of the Libs.