Liberals’ Request to Extend Council Nomination Deadline Denied After Major Paperwork Fumble

Former New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet leaves the New South Wales Liberal party campaign launch, ahead of the 2023 New South Wales state election, at Liverpool Catholic Club in Sydney, Australia, on March 12, 2023. AAP Image/Flavio Brancaleone

The Liberals’ request for a one-week extension on local election nominations was denied on Aug. 17 by the New South Wales (NSW) electoral commissioner.

Following a failure to submit up to 151 nomination forms for local elections by the deadline, Liberal state president Don Harwin wrote to the NSW electoral commission requesting an extension until Aug. 21.

However, after considering the grounds for an extension, acting NSW electoral commissioner, Mathew Phillips has rejected the request.

Impact on Conservative Voters

There are still 281 Liberals running across 31 council areas, but conservative voters will have few options in some council elections.

Affected councils include Northern Beaches, Lane Cove, Camden, and Campbelltown in Sydney, as well as Cessnock, Wollongong, Shoalhaven, and Blue Mountains in regional areas.

Eight local councils, including several strong Liberal areas, have no Liberal candidate and nine councils only have partial Liberal candidate coverage.

Election analyst and creator of the Tallyroom website, Ben Raue, estimated that the Liberals would lose several seats. He also estimated an increase in the number of councils run by a one-party majority.

“There’s going to be a lot more councils where there’s just one party that runs the show, and generally that means a lot more decisions happen behind closed doors, in private, and I think you'll see a bunch more of that,” Raue told Australian Associated Press.

“It’s not very common in the big partisan urban councils that one party gets a majority.”

Raue also said other conservative candidates would benefit in some councils, receiving more voter support.

“There’s a few ex-Liberal members or ’rebel Liberals’ in places like the Blue Mountains, Hornsby, and Lane Cove who will probably just get a much bigger vote than they would have gotten,” he said.

He said on his website that it was possible Liberal Councillor Paul Ell could have been the frontrunner for the directly elected mayoralty in Shoalhaven.

However, now Raue expects ex-liberal independent Jemma Tribe, leader of Team Tribe, or Patricia White, leader of Shoalhaven Independents to win office.

Concerning Mid-Coast, Raue said it’s unclear who liberal voters will vote for in the absence of liberal nominees, but noted the presence of several independent conservative options.

Liberal Party Preventative Action

NSW Liberal State Director Richard Shields was fired on Aug. 15 in response to the failure.

The party said that the mistake was not good enough and confirmed that endorsed candidates who had been affected would be reimbursed.

“To prevent this from ever happening again, we are reviewing our process to thoroughly investigate what went wrong,” the NSW Liberal Party said in the statement on Aug. 16.

“We are fully committed to implementing all necessary changes to strengthen our processes … while what happened is a setback, it will not define us.”