Craig Kelly saved from preselection after NSW party bows to PM

Extract from The Guardian

Australian politics

Scott Morrison lobbied the state Liberal executive to rein in moderates who wanted to oust the conservative member for Hughes

Katharine Murphy and Anne Davies

Mon 3 Dec 2018 14.21 AEDT First published on Mon 3 Dec 2018 13.57 AEDT

Craig Kelly in parliament on Monday when he was saved from preselection. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The outspoken conservative Craig Kelly will remain the Liberal candidate for Hughes at the next federal election after the New South Wales party executive bowed to Scott Morrison’s wishes rather than allow the prime minister to be publicly humiliated.
Kelly chose to blow up an internal war within the Liberal party over his future by signalling last week he was prepared to go to the crossbench – following the Victorian Liberal Julia Banks – if he was dumped as the Liberal party candidate.

With the government finishing a torrid political year in a parlous parliamentary position, party figures went into overdrive to stop moderates from knocking off Kelly and triggering a fresh managerial crisis in Canberra.
Morrison lobbied members of the state executive to rubber stamp Kelly’s candidacy, and endorse remaining sitting members, including Jason Falinski, John Alexander and Lucy Wicks, and key figures agreed to abstain during a vote on Monday.
The internal tensions were heightened further by the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who weighed in strongly late on Sunday and Monday, lobbying members of the state executive to do the opposite.

Turnbull said the Liberal party’s democratic processes should be allowed to operate in the normal way “especially after such a long debate in the NSW Liberal party about the importance of grass roots membership involvement” – a reference to conservatives who have been campaigning for party reform and characterising key figures in the moderate faction as anti-democratic.
With the issue now elevated to a public fight between a current prime minister and a serving one, and with the final parliamentary sitting week of the year underway in Canberra, the state executive bowed to Morrison’s wishes on Monday to avoid further embarrassment.
The concession by moderates is entirely through gritted teeth, given there had been a strong desire to remove Kelly as the candidate in Hughes, and moderates control the numbers in the relevant branches.
In addition to lobbying against the Kelly fix, Turnbull also declared Morrison should not hang on until next May for an election, but go to the polls after Australia day to protect the interests of the Liberal government in NSW.
“My view is that it would be manifestly in the best interests and prospects of the Morrison government to go to the polls as soon as it can after the summer break,” Turnbull told the ABC on Monday morning.

“There’s a lot of concern in NSW Liberal circles that a very good, outstanding government led by Gladys Berejiklian is going to have its prospects of success diminished because of the brand damage to the Liberal party caused by the leadership change in August”.