Ryan shows up weaknesses in the Queensland Liberal Party

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.