Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
I READ with interest your recent article advising readers of the Liberal Party’s decision not to run a candidate for Lowan in November’s state election.
This is not so much a decision by the Liberal Party but a predicament that the party finds itself in after the then leaders of the Victorial Liberal and National parties – Ted Baillieu and Peter Ryan – in 2010 signed a two-term agreement for each party not to contest seats held by their Coalition partner when the sitting member retires and the seat becomes vacant.
This was not a decision of the Victorian Liberal Party membership but one between the leaders of the two parties.
There are many that argue that the agreement was only valid while Ted Baillieu was the leader and that now that Denis Napthine is state leader of the Victorian Liberal Party and State Premier, the agreement no longer has validity.
At our general meeting in Horsham last week, the membership was incensed at the removal of their democratic right to nominate and support a candidate in Lowan via this current agreement.
So much so that we have put forward a motion to State Council, which meets on April 12 and 13, for the Victorian Liberal Party to immediately withdraw from the agreement and support the fielding of Liberal candidates in vacant seats.
Our motion includes the re-adoption of the federal Coalition agreement allowing each party within the Coalition to field candidates in seats held by their Coalition partner whenever the seat becomes vacant.
It was this agreement that allowed us to nominate candidates for last year’s federal election following the retirement of the last Member for Mallee, John Forrest.
Many asked why the Liberal Party ran a candidate in Mallee when the seat was already comfortably held by the Coalition via the National Party.
It’s the very same reason the National Party ran a candidate in the safe Liberal seat of Barton in South Australia.
The current federal agreement provides the membership of both parties their democratic right to field candidates in vacant seats at election time.
In 1979, when former Nationals MP Bill McGrath narrowly won the seat of Lowan from the Liberal Party’s sitting member, Jim McCabe, there was no Coalition agreement in place.
Each party was able to field candidates at every election whether the seat was vacant or not.
Imagine if the current state Coalition agreement was in place in 1979 – the seat of Lowan would still be held by the Liberal Party, as it had been for many years and decades before.
Bill would not have been allowed to stand as a candidate and there would be dozens of agrieved National-Country Party members decrying their loss of democratic rights.
We like to think today that we live in a democracy and, if that is the case, it should be a full democracy that upholds the rights of all voters to have their say at the polls.
As it is, we have a half-baked democratic process in Victoria that may see many Liberal Party members cancel their membership for having their basic rights as members of a political party removed by the short-sightedness of a few.
It may also result in disenfranchised Liberal supporters voting for candidates from the independent parties, such as Palmer United and Katter’s Australian Party, who have both stated that they plan to field candidates in the Victorian election.
This will further erode the Coalition’s voting majority in so-called ‘safe’ seats.
By allowing the Coalition partners to both run candidates in vacant seats, the most likely outcome would be to strengthen the Coalition vote in those seats and at least maintain the Coalition numbers in the Legislative Council.
If the Coalition lose votes to the independent candidates, not only might we hand the Victorian Parliament to the Labor Party in November but also lose numbers in the Upper House.
Barry Crewther
Horsham branch president,
Liberal Party of Australia,
Victorian division