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Dear President Kroger and Fellow Victorian Liberal Party Administrative Committee Members (And a Few Others on BCC), As You

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Dear President Kroger and Fellow Victorian Liberal Party Administrative Committee Members (And a Few Others on BCC), As You From: Stephen Mayne [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, 2 August 2018 4:31 PM To: '[email protected]' Cc: '[email protected]' Subject: Decision to be taken at Admin Committee tonight Dear President Kroger and fellow Victorian Liberal Party Administrative Committee members (and a few others on BCC), As you may be aware by now, the following story appeared in Crikey today about your meeting tonight. A text version is reproduced below if you are unable to get past the paywall. Also relevant is this earlier story which appeared in The Manningham Leader on July 14, outlining the scenario that if Australia’s soon to be longest serving incumbent Federal MP, Kevin Andrews, is centrally endorsed in Menzies to serve for more than 30 years, I will run as an independent against him at the 2019 Federal election. Please note that my main interest in securing the departure of Kevin Andrews relates to his positions on gambling. Australians lose more per capita gambling than any other people on earth. The total losses will exceed $25 billion in 2018, which will cause enormous damage to families, along with more crime, family violence and suicide, not to mention the loss of potential revenue for small business which have to deal with $25 billion less circulating throughout the economy each year. I am a professional advocate for gambling reform and Mr Andrews was the shadow Minister who helped defeat the proposed Andrew Wilkie reforms to poker machines in 2011. Subsequent to that move, Mr Andrews has inappropriately accepted $40,000 in campaign donations from Clubs NSW, an organisation based in Sydney which operates as ruthlessly to promote gambling as the NRA does in relation to guns in the United States. Why would you abandon preselections across all Victorian seats just to protect a record like that? There is no plausible argument for abandoning local democracy ahead of the 2019 Federal election. As your President, Michael Kroger, has previously remarked at State Council, even Malcolm Fraser faced a preselection challenge when he was the sitting Prime Minister. In searching for precedents where the Victorian division of the Liberal Party abolished all local democracy, the only example I can think of was the 1996 state election when then Premier Jeff Kennett called a snap early election the day after John Howard was elected. In that scenario, the record short 27 day campaign made it practically impossible for local plebiscites to be held. The circumstances are very different today with a Federal election now likely to be held in April or May next year. There is plenty of time. History also suggests there is little risk of instability if the usual procedures of opening nominations to all eligible members is adopted. The last time a high profile sitting Victorian Federal MP was challenged was Petro Georgiou in 2007 and the challenger was Josh Frydenberg. As that example demonstrated, emerging talent should be allowed to challenge long serving incumbents. That’s democracy. That’s how you bring fresh talent through and remove dead wood. The other key point that I omitted to mention in today’s Crikey piece is this persuasive speech that Marcus Bastiaan delivered to the Democratic Reform Convention in Sydney. A more persuasive case for declaring all preselections open tonight you will not find. Therefore, would somebody please be good enough to move and second the following motion this evening: I move that the Administrative Committee of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party authorises that: Nominations for all Victorian seats to be contested at the 2019 Federal election be declared open on Friday, August 3, 2018 with eligible nominations to be received at party headquarters by no later than Friday, August 17, 2018. A meeting of the Administrative Committee be called for Monday, August 20, 2018 for the dual purposes of: a. Endorsing all unchallenged sitting members of Parliament; b. Setting a timetable for the conduct of contested preselections which are to be all concluded by no later than Sunday, September 30, 2018. The committee notes that any preselection outcomes deemed unsatisfactory to the committee can be overturned by a super-majority vote of this committee. I look forward to hearing the outcome of tonight’s deliberation and hope that I do not need to contest Menzies again as progressive small l liberal independent in the event that local democracy has been subverted in such an unacceptable way. Please note that my campaign will rely heavily on the eloquent speech delivered by Marcus Bastiaan when he was supporting Tony Abbott’s push for the Warringah Motion to open up local democracy and reinvigorate the NSW party’s dwindling membership. I have also distributed this email to the former Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, knowing what a staunch advocate of local plebiscites he has been in recent years. If the party does indeed abandon local democracy tonight, I look forward to hearing Kevin Andrews, Michael Kroger, Marcus Bastiaan, Tony Abbott and everyone else involved in the decision, publically articulating why this was an appropriate decision to take. Finally, in case any voting members are not on email this afternoon, could someone please take some printed copies of this email to 104 tonight so that everyone is fully informed of its contents. If you have any queries I can be reached on return email or 0412 106 241. Yours Sincerely Stephen Mayne # Former Liberal Party staffer in the Kennett Government #Advocate for gambling reform, transparency, democracy, merit, good governance, shareholder rights, free speech and institutional renewal Crikey: Will Victorian Liberals abandon local democracy tonight? Thursday, August 2, 2018 By Stephen Mayne Crikey Founder At 6.15pm tonight, Thursday August 2, the 19 members of the Victorian Liberal Party’s Administrative Committee will gather at party headquarters with a key item on the agenda: what to do with upcoming federal preselections. Crikey understands a controversial resolution is being proposed to automatically re- endorse all sitting House of Representative members, something which hasn’t happened ahead of a general election before. The Victorian Liberals have been dragging their heels as every other Liberal division is well advanced in the preselection process for next year’s federal election and none of them have gone down the undemocratic approach of cancelling local ballots. Indeed, leaving aside sitting MPs, the Victorians are yet to even commence the process for preselecting candidates in marginal Labor-held seats, which seems extraordinarily negligent with an election due no later than May 2019. So while Labor has settled on Daniel Andrews staffer Josh Burns to replace the retiring Michael Danby in Melbourne Ports (now renamed McNamara), the Liberals haven’t even called for nominations. With an election no more than 10 months away, what sort of political outfit doesn’t have challenging candidates on the ground in marginal seats? For instance, Labor has preselected market researcher Dean Harris to take on Tony Abbott in Warringah and you can watch the impressive campaign launch speech that he delivered last week. So why the delay in Victoria? It is partly driven by some factional re-alignments with a conservative group taking control but unsure about how to deploy their newfound power and without a spokesman to articulate their positions in the media. There has been a lot of media about a religious right takeover of the Victorian Liberals, and it hasn’t been pretty with even Andrew Bolt taking them on. The 19 members of the committee gathering at 104 Exhibition Street, Melbourne tonight will broadly split into three camps. The conservative majority have 10 clear members of their camp and line up as follows: Marcus Bastiaan, metro male vice president; Ivan Stratov, metro male rep; Karina Okotel, metro female vice president; Alexander Lisov, Young Liberals President; David Lau, country male representative; David Mond, Treasurer; Joanna O’Kane, country female representative; Renee Heath, metro female representative; Paul Mitchell, vice president country representative, and; Bev McArthur, vice president country representative. The two most influential members of the group are former Family First candidate and doctor Ivan Stratov and youthful factional powerbroker Marcus Bastiaan, who has been a key figure in recruiting new members into the fold. The two existing federal MPs regarded to have the most influence over the group are Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar and former defence minister Kevin Andrews. Opposing this group from a more mainstream or moderate perspective on the Admin Committee are the following: Ian Quick, metro male representative; Tony Snell, immediate past president; Holly Byrne, metro female representative; Robyne Head, country female representative; Greg Mirabella, country male representative and husband of Sophie, and; Mitch Fifield, nominee of federal parliamentary party, but it could be someone else on the night. And then sitting across the top is what might be called President Michael Kroger’s grouping, which includes the Kroger himself, along with his former wife, former senator Helen Kroger, who is on the committee as chair of the Liberal Women’s Council, and state Liberal leader Matthew Guy. At one level, both Michael Kroger and Matthew Guy have lost control over the central admin committee and are in the hands of an inexperienced conservative outfit which could cause considerable damage in the lead-up to both the federal election and November’s Victorian election. The conservatives quite brazenly ignored an earlier request from the Prime Minister to get on with preselections and are now looking to lock in all the incumbents — something which will save Kevin Andrews from an inevitable internal challenge. This will likely infuriate the 12,000 rank-and-file members in Victoria and has sparked threats of a special state council meeting to address the matter.
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