Ryan shows up weaknesses in the Queensland Liberal Party

For the past 25 years, federal Coalition victories have been built on strong results in Queensland. John Moore’s resignation as Minister for Defence, and his announced intention to resign as the Member for Ryan, have set off aftershocks that demonstrate Queensland will be a problem for Howard this election.

It was already a fragile state. Five of the eight most marginal Coalition seats are in Queensland. And the state branch has been in almost constant crisis since 1983.

The fragility and lack of depth in the Queensland Liberal Party is demonstrated by the fact that in the Ministerial reshuffle Queensland missed out on Cabinet representation entirely. In electoral terms this does not help perceptions at the next election. In practical terms it means that Queensland will be disadvantaged when high-level policy discussions take place. To be fair, this is not entirely Queensland’s fault. Howard could have promoted Senator Ian MacDonald, the Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government, or put David Jull back into the Ministry.

A safe seat like Ryan, which takes in the most affluent suburban area of Brisbane, is a natural opportunity to inject new talent into the Queensland branch. The two frontrunners for the seat are Michael Johnson and Matthew Boland. Do they offer the Liberal Party hope for the future?

Michael Johnson was unknown in the Liberal Party a couple of years ago. Since then he has rapidly risen to prominence. Not through policy debate or by being conspicuously brave during election campaigns, but because he has signed up 300 or so ethnic Chinese members to Ryan with the avowed intention of being the next member. Inquiries show that many of these do not live in the area, and some of them are foreign residents. Johnson qualified as a barrister last year, but appears to be of the briefless kind, not even maintaining chambers. Before that he spent most of his 30 years studying, apart from a couple of years doing articles with law firm Minter Ellison.

Matthew Boland is also in his late 20s but has a demonstrated track record, first as Young Liberal state president, and then as Federal Y/L president. He is currently a vice-president of the senior Party and employed as a solicitor. His background also is not quite standard. His first political involvement was as a member of the National Party where he was involved in the Joh for PM campaign.

Contrast these two candidates with the front-running candidate for pre-selection for Ryan of 25 years ago. John Moore was 39 years of age and a major figure in the Brisbane business and political community. He had been the youngest member of the Brisbane stock exchange. His commercial career included founding Waltons Finance and company directorships. He had sporting credentials, and was President of the Lawn Tennis Association. By the age of 37 he had progressed from Treasurer to President of the Party. Clearly he had the demonstrated ability to go right to the top.

But the ultimate unsuitability of the two current front-runners is not just a question of personal substance, it is a question of political sense. The Queensland Labor Party is in the middle of a crisis induced by years of apparently methodical abuse of the electoral process for internal political gain. It is on the defensive, having lost the Deputy Premier, another state Member and a state candidate to allegations of rorting. As of this morning’s Courier Mail the tally appears likely to increase by another two state MPs.

This gives the coalition its best opportunity for wresting power from the ALP, and the ALP knows it. As a result they have been counter-attacking by questioning the Liberal Party’s internal processes. The best result for the ALP is that the public throws up its hands and says "You’re both as bad as each other … we’ll stick with Beattie, we like him, and at least he’s trying to do something about it."

Johnson has been accused of rorting. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Professor Chiou from the University of Queensland claimed to be one of the masterminds behind it. He was quoted as saying "… the Liberals were targeted rather than Labor because it was easier for Chinese Australians without longstanding party loyalties to be preselected." Under Liberal Party rules anyone who is a branch member in a Federal Electorate can vote in the preselection for the federal representative. The only qualification for branch membership is to be over the age of 16. There is no geographical, or nationality qualification, and Johnson appears to have exploited this loophole.

But there are also suggestions of illegality. Under the Liberal Party Constitution it is illegal to pay for another’s membership. It was alleged under parliamentary privilege that Johnson had in fact offered to do this. At the time it was denied, however, in today’s Australian, it is revealed that Johnson in fact did pay some memberships. There are also suggestions in the press that many of Johnson’s members may have been signed on at cut rates as students or pensioners when they are neither.

Boland also comes with baggage. In 1996 he was censured for his role in rorting and fraud that had occurred in the Young Liberal movement. And while the focus in Ryan has been on the ethnic Chinese enrolments, Boland also presides over some rotten boroughs. Most members of Young Liberal branches live anywhere but Ryan.

Both candidates show up the Queensland Liberal Party’s weak position on internal affairs. There is a difference between what is illegal and what is unethical. At the very least both of these candidates have acted unethically, and the party, while it has had opportunities to act, has failed to.

Added to that there are factional problems in Ryan that threaten to reshape the party entirely. John Moore was fond of saying that whoever controlled Ryan controlled the Liberal Party. Until recently the dominant group in this area was the moderate group of former Party President, Bob Tucker. This includes local MPs Denver Beanland and David Watson.

The party has failed to deal with Johnson because he gave the Santoro/Carroll faction, which includes now-Senator George Brandis, control of Ryan. Brandis needed Johnson’s numbers to deliver Ryan for the Senate nomination, and the Carroll/Santoro faction want to replace Beanland and Watson. Johnson was going to challenge Moore earlier this year but was talked out of it. The moderates thought they had time to regroup. Moore’s resignation changes that.

However, while Johnson has been useful to the right, he is also an irritant. Boland was always their pick to replace Moore, and they were relying on the grunt of Young Liberal conscripts alone to control Ryan. There is a good chance that if they could find a way to shaft Johnson now, and win Ryan for Boland, they would.

Johnson’s strategies in his Ryan run do not bespeak a terribly subtle political mind. Before Johnson, Ryan was a two-way tussle. With his arrival it became a three-way fight. The classic way to win such a contest is to position yourself as either the number one or number two contestant, and to try to keep friendly relations with both sides. That way, as long as you don’t run third, you will win preferences from the loser and ensure your bid. Instead of that, Johnson allowed himself to be romanced by Brandis (who needed his support for the Senate) and swung across to the right. That alienated the moderates. On top of that, he demonstrated overwhelming force by signing up enough members to virtually guarantee a majority in the preselection. That made potential enemies of his new friends as well.

Now Brandis has what he wants, and Boland is out on a limb. Not a stable position for Johnson. It probably won’t matter however, because the Tucker and Santoro forces would need to agree on a deal, and here they come across a classic dilemma.

Liberal Party preselections are exhaustive preferential ballots. That means that there are multiple first-past-the-post ballots. After each ballot the candidate with least votes is eliminated. This continues until someone wins more than 50 per cent of the vote. To beat Johnson, Boland and Tucker need to deal. If Boland goes out first, he directs his voters to vote for the Tucker candidate, and vice-versa. The weakness in this deal is that a candidate only has a strong incentive to abide by the deal if they have a chance of winning. Once they are eliminated they don’t really care what happens. Both sides distrust each other so deeply that such a deal would be unlikely to be initiated because neither side would trust the other to stick to it if their candidate went out first.

As a result of this distrust, both camps marginalise themselves and have no effect on the result. The only way this could be bridged would be for both Boland and the Tucker groups to relinquish their claim to the seat and endorse a third party who is acceptable to both sides.

There is another possibility. The Queensland Liberal Party has a vetting committee, that is supposed to check out all candidates for preselection and eliminate those who are unsuitable. This committee could, on the current evidence, be used to eliminate Johnson, and possibly Boland. This is unlikely to happen. The ruling clique wouldn’t want to eliminate Boland, and if they eliminated only Johnson, there is a good chance that he would back a Tucker candidate out of spite.

If any deals are to happen, it would have to be imposed from outside Queensland anyway as the local party is currently imploding. Despite having backed Galtos as President only three months ago, the Santoro/Carroll faction now wants him out and is agitating for an Extraordinary General Meeting of State Executive to move a vote of no confidence. It has the numbers on Executive and such a motion would be likely to pass. Why the sudden change of mind? The stated reasons are that Galtos fails to consult and that the party has no money.

It seems much more likely that the real reason is that when it backed Galtos at the last convention it thought it were backing him into a certain loss. Now it thinks the Liberal Party is going to win and wants to be in the driver’s seat.

That faction's candidate for President is Robin Fardoulys, currently a vice-president and the state Campaign Chairman. It argues that he will improve the party’s campaigning skills. Fardoulys was one of the architects of the Bundamba and Woodridge by-election campaigns where the Liberal Party struggled to get into double figures. In fact, in Woodridge it ran third to an independent.

In another sign of bad judgement the Santoro/Carroll faction are threatening to call a State Executive meeting to demand that Liberal Parliamentary Leader David Watson reinstate Santoro to the front bench. It is never a good idea to try to neuter your leader just before an election. Not only that, but Santoro was the architect of his own demise, having resigned in a fit of pique. Then he was found to have under-reported donations to his campaign. Recent filings by the Liberal Party suggest that this was by an amount of $50,000. Watson won’t agree, but the demand on its own will do him huge damage.

Ryan not only has the potential to play to Labor’s advantage in the state election, but the possibility of the Liberal Party losing it should not be discounted. The Bass by-election signalled the end of the Whitlam Labor government with a 19 per cent swing. Ryan won’t be another Bass, but an independent could conceivably achieve the 9.25 per cent swing required to win.

All the classic elements for a large protest vote are there. The electors are being taken for granted to the degree where the preselection is likely to be won through cynical manipulation by a candidate without any real community credentials. It is occurring in an atmosphere of general disgust with politicians, heightened by the Shepherdson Inquiry. And making Ryan a marginal seat is likely to give it more influence in government than it has at the moment, not less.

Safe seats where one of the major parties scores a low vote are also fertile ground for independents. That is why Beazley needs to run. While it is an outside chance that Labor could win, a Labor candidate is absolutely necessary to provide the right atmospherics for a good independent. Is there a good independent around? Not visibly, but shenanigans like those in Ryan tend to flush them out.

Ryan has been taken for granted for too long. John Moore was never an active local member, concentrating on the higher-level power games. As a former vice-president of the Queensland Liberals used to be fond of saying: "We will never know how safe Ryan is until John Moore goes." The way things are at the moment, he may have been too optimistic. Whatever scenario plays out in Ryan, it may be another generation until the Liberal Party really knows how safe it might be. If the Queensland Liberal Party can survive that long.