The usually sure-footed Greiner stumbles but stays on track
Nick Greiner, the man tasked with saving the Liberal Party, has made the extraordinary admission that he does not want the job.
The Liberals' federal executive has appointed the former NSW premier to head a new committee to oversee the party's NSW branch, after embarrassing comments by another elder statesman made his continuing tenure impossible.
However, just hours after Greiner accepted the new challenge, he told ABC radio he was not keen to take the job. 'I tried to get out of it but they caught me at Auckland Airport yesterday morning at 4:30 am, and I was, I was weak,' he said. 'And look, I don't mean to be jocular about it ... that is actually true.'
It is an unusual first step stumble from the sure-footed 78-year-old Greiner when the Liberal Party needs acutely disciplined leadership and tough reform following monumental administrative calamity in NSW and historic rebuff from heartland voters in last month's federal election.
The former leader Peter Dutton last year appointed Alan Stockdale, 80, a former Liberal Party federal president and ex-Victorian treasurer, another outsider, former Victorian senator Richard Alston, 84, and former NSW MP Peta Seaton, 65, as administrators to run the NSW division after its failure to nominate 144 candidates for local government elections. The intervention seemed to be proceeding apace with the executive due to consider extending the trio's term on Tuesday, until Stockdale put his foot in his mouth.
The Victorian told a Zoom meeting of the NSW Liberal Women's Council earlier this month that 'women are sufficiently assertive now ... we should be giving some thought to whether we need to protect men's involvement'. With consternation rippling through Liberal ranks – after all, the party failed due to its inability to attract or retain women voters – Stockdale apologised, but it was clear the two octogenarians' days were numbered.
Being Victorians had something to do with it, but being male and stale played a role too, and Stockdale and Alston were shown the door. In their stead, they have been replaced by a hand-picked team with Seaton joined by leading moderate Liberal Jane Buncle, party vice presidents Berenice Walker, Peter O'Hanlon and James Owen, and honorary treasurer Mark Baillie, all of them under Greiner's watchful eye.
Stockdale left another parting misstep: several Liberal sources told the Herald 's Alexandra Smith he had argued Walker, president of the women's council, should not be on the new committee. At the same time, some right-wing members pushed for former prime minister Tony Abbott to be on the committee, but were overwhelmingly opposed.
Greiner admits party factions foster self-interest and deter voters, but told the ABC he would like to remove the branches' power to reject members and reduce the state executive from 27 to about 10 or 12.
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