Qld Liberals must stop the internal battles and focus on winning seats

In some ways it would have been more accurate if Gerard Henderson had named his 1994 book Menzies' Children rather than Menzies' Child because the Liberal Party is an unruly family of state-based organisations rather than a unified whole.

This can make the job of running the Federal party extraordinarily frustrating.

While the Feds put on the public front, they are reliant on state-based satraps to provide the forces and failure by these to perform can put the whole empire at risk.

The runt of Menzies' litter is the Queensland Liberal Party and its state conference, last weekend, showed the federal leader's institutional weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

This was a crucial convention for the Libs.

Before Christmas 2004 they will have fought full election campaigns at each level of government - this is unparalleled in modern Queensland history and will tax all parties.

While the Liberals can rely on public funding and John Howard to tide them through the federal election they are really up against it at other levels of government.

So this convention should have been one that ensured competent people were in place to run campaigns and raise funds; gave a clean public platform to all three leaders; and welded the team together. It did none of these.

The Queensland Liberal party has been dominated by two factions for quite some time.

One of these, run by Senator Santo Santoro, is great at intra-organisational elections. The other, centred on Bob Tucker, is effective at winning elections to public office. Until recently neither side has been prepared to cede any power to the other, resulting in a situation where the dominant faction controls more and more of less and less.

This has frustrated Howard and state leader Bob Quinn, and an increasing number of rank and file branch members.

Last year, Quinn took on state president Michael Caltabiano, successfully reforming the party's rules and making it harder to rort preselections.

As a result, Quinn candidates have won the majority of preselections in winnable seats.

But Quinn failed to change the party's administration and old problems have persisted. Ethnic branch-stacking in the Ryan electorate continues unabated, where local federal member Michael Johnson uses his numbers to try to destroy his enemies, who include incumbent councillors up for election in six months' time.

These numbers also are deployed at conventions. Out of about 480 Liberal delegates, Johnson controlled 70, giving the Santoro faction the winning edge on a number of executive positions.

Johnson also is supporting strongly the legal appeal by Russell Galt against the preselection result in Moggill, one of only three state seats they hold. You would think that the Liberals would be able to sort this out relatively amicably with an election so close.

The Prime Minister thought so and tried to broker a deal, but to no avail. Incredibly, according to reports, Caltabiano is supporting the appeal, even though it is against his handling of the preselection.

The current administration is inept at fundraising. While it claims to have $200,000 in the bank, this is only enough to run the party for six months and some of this is rumoured to be in barter dollars (which exchange for real dollars at something less than 1:1).

Some point to the sale of the party's headquarters as a sign of the real state of affairs. Apparently, the bank insisted that it go because the party hadn't paid interest of $70,000 a year for the past three years.

Not only have these things disturbed the Tuckerites but they have disturbed some in the Santoro faction. It already was ripe for a split after Santoro welched on a factional agreement to elevate Brisbane academic Russell Trood to the senate and took the spot himself. This upset former ally Bob Carroll, creating a third separate faction. As a result, Quinn was able to broker a relationship dubbed the coalition of the unwilling ? between Tucker and Carroll.

Unfortunately for Quinn, and for Howard, it was not enough as Johnson's numbers more than made up the deficit.

The plight of the Queensland Liberal party must keep Howard up at night and shows just how thin a veneer holds the federal liberals in place. Federal intervention is not an option.

Howard tried that after the last state election and was persuaded only last year that the state branch could stand on its own feet. He can only watch and hope that the meltdown doesn't actually affect his watch.

It is ironic that while recent polls show the Federal Liberal vote as being strongest in Queensland, in the long term this branch is one of its major problems.

Howard will go down in history as one of Australia's most successful politicians, but what will be left standing when he is gone?