liam's picture
Mon, 17/07/2006 - 9:07am — liam

Lebanon being bombed? Gaza shelled? Rockets falling into Israel? Threat of all-out war in the Middle East? All of these are but nothing in the face of the vast, roiling internecine preselection struggles about to be waged in New South Wales.

Praise God, put down the ammunitition and pass the electoral enrolment forms! (PDF)

First up is the Clash of Civilisations in Epping, in which the well-connected, led by the head of HREOC Pru Goward, and representing the electively aristocratic ancien régime of NSW anti-Labor (and a few conveniently enrolled and joined-up Maronites) are going to go up against the secret forces of the well-resourced and reactionary, in the form of the Liberals’ ugly right wing in Greg Smith, a candidate so unappealing that even Miranda Devine picked her side against him.

I’m not going to call that one yet, because today has been announced a far greater and more epic struggle between the forces of Sort-of-Good and Sort-of-Good. It’s Labor Left agin’ Labor Left in the boho inner-west. The redistributed seat of Balmain is so new that even the SEO don’t list it amongst the electoral districts, but the conflict is as old as ecology. The greatest competition for any kind of resource—in this case votes—usually comes from within the species.

I don’t know how the local Greens do their preselections, whether it’s a decision taken in secret by a revolutionary vanguard of ex-Baader Meinhof and Red Brigadiers, or whether it’s transmitted to the faithful by the water spirits and the nyads in the wilderness. However they do it, they’re going to have to face the survivor of the Balmain Thunderdome: in which two women enter, and one woman leaves.

It’s going to be a good month for pure, unadulterated stoush.

UPDATE: I don’t think I can miss Four Corners.

Four Corners spoke to more than 100 Liberals during the making of the program which reveals deep concern by members about branch stacking, vote rorting and the direction the party is heading. Some Liberals have agreed to talk despite their belief that they may be expelled from the party for doing so.
Declining membership in the Liberal Party, some say, has made it vulnerable to takeover by a well-organised group with a narrow agenda which they believe will damage the party’s electoral prospects.

UPDATE II: Four Corners transcript in full is here. Read it and weep (laughing, in my case):

JOHN HYDE PAGE, FORMER YOUNG LIBERAL: Branch stacking can involve a range of things. I mean, at its most basic, it’s just introducing people into the party who wouldn’t otherwise have joined. At its most extreme, it’s signing people up to the party without telling them. It’s paying for their memberships, it’s bribing people to join the party.
JANINE COHEN: And is that happening in the Liberal Party in New South Wales?
JOHN HYDE PAGE, FORMER YOUNG LIBERAL: Oh, it’s rife!
JANINE COHEN: How do you know that?
JOHN HYDE PAGE, FORMER YOUNG LIBERAL: Well, I was involved in it for a long period of time.

UPDATE III: from Arleeshar comes the link to the upcoming book which I intend to buy and read immediately upon publication.