Alexandra Smith is the state political editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. She says the liberal party will pay for the missed opportunity, at the polls.
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00:00We have a situation where there will be local government elections next month, where there
00:06will be a major party largely missing in some of the key local government areas. Northern
00:11Beaches is one of those, Shoalhaven down in the south of the state. Northern Beaches will
00:15not have one single Liberal candidate contesting a seat for that council area. And it is just
00:22incredible that it all comes down to a pretty simple mistake, really. Forms were just not
00:26submitted on time. The deadline was missed. The other parties, you know, whether it would
00:31be Labor, the Greens, they managed to get theirs in. But for whatever reason, the New
00:35South Wales Liberals failed. 140 candidates are missing from the ballot paper which was
00:40drawn yesterday. About 16 councils are impacted. It's an absolute debacle and chaotic and a
00:46big problem for the New South Wales Liberals. A problem for the New South Wales Liberals,
00:50but also for their supporters as well, because you're going into these local council elections.
00:55If you're a traditional Liberal supporter, you're not going to be represented anymore.
00:59Of course, you will not have a Liberal candidate to vote for, for example, in the Northern
01:03Beaches, but plenty of other wards and other councils as well. It's an extraordinary situation
01:07that in one ward in Penrith, it will just be Labor that doesn't even have to go to the
01:13election because there are enough candidates, Labor candidates, just to fill that ward because
01:17no Liberals were nominated as part of this debacle.
01:22Alexandra, it makes you question how democracy works. The whole point of a democracy is being
01:27able to choose who should represent you. Is there any kind of talk that there could be
01:33some way of allowing these candidates to get on the ballot?
01:35The only way you could do that is through legislation, because we have very tight rules
01:39around the New South Wales Electoral Commission, and rightly so. The Labor government would
01:44have to agree to move legislation, and they're not going to be wanting to do that. Not to
01:50damage democracy, but it would set a very bad precedent, wouldn't it? It would say we're
01:56willing to move the goalpost if you can't get your house in order to get simple forms
02:00in on time, so that will not happen. We will see an election next month with Liberals missing
02:05from a lot of local government areas.
02:07Have you spoken to any of these Liberals?
02:10Yeah. They are just, they're absolutely devastated. Some of them are sitting, sitting councillors
02:17already. They lose their job. They don't get to run again. The Liberals were very bullish
02:22in the Northern Beaches, and they thought that they would get their deputy mayor, a
02:26female, up. She's not even going to have a chance to run, let alone be mayor.
02:31So she loses her job.
02:32She loses her job.
02:33She might have grounds to take action.
02:35Well, I did. We have asked about that, but of course it's pretty hard to prove that,
02:39first of all, you were going to be elected, you know. So they probably don't have a lot
02:43of grounds, except to just be incredibly angry at the Liberal Party and their organisational
02:48arm of the party they represent.
02:50So the director of the Liberal Party, Richard Shields, sacked last night. So they called
02:57an extraordinary, urgent state executive meeting. State executives is the decision-making body
03:03of the Liberals. They're the only body that has the power to sack the state director.
03:07So the state director is basically, you know, the CEO of the party. Unanimously they resolved
03:11that he had to go. That's not surprising. I mean, the buck stops with him, of course.
03:18But I don't think that will be the end of the infighting. There's so much anger at the
03:22party, you know, within both the parliamentary party, the organisational wing. Like, going
03:29into local government elections, but of course a federal election, and we have key by-elections
03:34also in New South Wales. Dominic Perrottet resigned, so did Matt Keane. So we've got
03:39two by-elections in October that the Liberals have to contest. It's completely, you know,
03:44it has far more broad impacts than just the local government elections as well.
03:49Just one other thought, Alexandra. There would have been money donated to people's campaigns.
03:53There would be funds around councillors or people standing for Protective to be a councillor.
03:59I mean, do they give the money back?
04:01Well, I presume they would have to. I mean, there are corflutes up with people's faces
04:06on them who will not be running in the election. There's a lot of that sort of stuff that will
04:10have to be ironed out in the coming days and weeks. Of course, they're going to have to
04:14appoint a new state director immediately because they need to get on with running the local
04:21elections and they still have about 300 candidates across the state running, so it's not completely,
04:26you know. But yeah, there's a lot of organisational things that will have to be sorted out really
04:31quickly at the same time when all this bloodletting is going on within the party.
04:35I asked you if you'd spoken to any councillors. Of course, you have. But what about the people
04:38in these constituencies? Are you getting many readers contact you and say...
04:42Absolutely.
04:43Right.
04:44Inundated, yeah. Because people like you spoke about the issue of democracy. People feel
04:48that they've been denied a right to vote for a particular, you know, party and of course
04:52there are many people that would have voted for the Liberals, of course. And now they're
04:57very angry and they're wondering where their vote goes. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised
05:01if we see a high number of donkey votes at this election because, you know, people are
05:06angry and perhaps say, you know, they don't want to vote for... well, they won't vote
05:10for Labor if they're a Liberal voter. Perhaps it'll help the independence but it'll make
05:14this, dare I say it, this local government elections far more interesting than it may
05:17have otherwise been.
05:18Looking forward to it. Alexandra Smith, thank you so much.