Craig Kelly walked into
the Engadine Gymnastics Club on Sunday night a man under pressure.
The embattled Liberal
Party backbencher spotted a group of local politicians who had also been
invited to hand out awards to excited children. The group included Lee Evans, a
Liberal member of the NSW Parliament, and Carmelo Pesce, the Liberal mayor of
the Sutherland Shire Council.
Kelly put out his hand
to greet the mayor. Pesce put his hand behind his back.
"You're a f---ing
prick!" Kelly shouted at Pesce. "Are you f---ing kidding me? You're
not going to f---ing shake my hand?"
Pesce refused to speak
but Kelly - who had spent much of Sunday trying to save his career - didn't
take the hint: "What? Do you mean you're not going to f---ing shake my
hand."
Pesce relented and told
Kelly he could not stomach the thought of shaking his hand.
"You're a disgrace
for what you're doing to the party," Pesce told Kelly.
"You're the
disgrace," Kelly shot back. Gymnastics coach Graham Spooner intervened and
told the men to cool it. So did Evans.
Kelly confirmed the
encounter when contacted by Fairfax Media on Sunday night but declined to comment.
Pesce refused to talk but Evans confirmed the exchange: "This is not how
you behave in public," he said of Kelly.
The incident capped off
another bad day for Kelly and the Liberal Party, which is riven by bad blood
and infighting ahead of a federal election next year.
Just a few hours earlier
Kelly thought a deal had been done to save him from losing a preselection
challenge by local councillor Kent Johns for his safe southern Sydney seat of
Hughes.
A preselection defeat
would be a disaster for Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who needs to keep
Kelly's conservative faction happy and do whatever it takes to keep the
unpredictable backbencher from shifting to the crossbench.
A plan was hatched over
the weekend to fix it all. Morrison's powerbrokers decided the best way to
handle a tough preselection fight was to cancel the preselection altogether.
The NSW Liberal Party's 23-member state executive would be asked to use its
emergency powers to automatically endorse all sitting MPs, including Kelly.
The proposal initially
received the support of some members of the moderate faction, who loathe Kelly
for his role in the demise of Malcolm Turnbull but were prepared to suck it up
for Morrison and party unity.
But as the day went on
the backlash grew. Several moderate state executive members resisted enormous
pressure from some of the most senior figures in the Morrison government to get
on board and save Kelly. By 5pm it was clear the plan to cancel preselections
would never get through the state executive. Kelly would likely have to face
preselection after all - a reality that hit just before he strode into the
Engadine Gymnastics Club.
An intervention by
Malcolm Turnbull proved crucial. Turnbull hit the roof when he found out about
the peace proposal and telephoned state executive members, including Matt Kean,
a minister in Gladys Berejiklian's government, to urge them to vote against it.
Turnbull couldn't
believe Kelly and his conservative allies were backing a plan to suspend
preselections when they'd campaigned so hard over recent years for reforms to
give grassroots members more power in selecting candidates.
In a series of tweets,
the former prime minister went public: "It has been put to me that Mr
Kelly has threatened to go to the crossbench and 'bring down the government'.
If indeed he has made that threat, it is not one that should result in a
capitulation. Indeed it would be the worst and weakest response to such a
threat.
"It is time for the
Liberal Party members in Hughes to have their say about their local member and
decide who they want to represent them."
Turnbull felt he had no
choice but to reveal he got involved on Sunday because News Corp publications
were preparing to publish stories he believed did not reflect what actually
went on.…..
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull serving up a cold dish of political revenge on the parliamentary party which sacked him as leader......
Malcolm Turnbull
yesterday urged senior Liberal Party figures to defy Scott Morrison by voting
against a plan to prevent conservative MP Craig Kelly losing preselection,
saying the Prime Minister just wanted to “keep his arse” in his prime
ministerial car as long as possible.
The brazen power play
was calculated to trigger an early federal election, with Mr Turnbull claiming
such a move would help the Berejiklian government avoid facing an
anti-Coalition backlash and losing office in March.
Mr Turnbull urged
several moderates, including NSW minister Matt Kean who is on the Liberal state
executive, to repudiate Mr Morrison by voting against the deal to save Mr
Kelly, which would prompt him to become an independent MP.
The ousted prime
minister told Mr Kean that if Mr Kelly moved to the
crossbench it would
“force Morrison to an early election and that will save the Berejiklian
government”.
“We should force Scott
to an early election because all he’s about is keeping his arse on C1”, Mr
Turnbull said, referring to the prime minister’s commonwealth car.
Mr Turnbull told Mr Kean
that he and Mr Morrison in government had agreed to go to an election on March
2 — three weeks before the NSW government election — but the Prime Minister was
now reneging.
The moderates on the
executive should not support Mr Kelly as a “matter of principle” as Mr Kelly was
the “most destructive member of the government”, Mr Turnbull told Mr Kean,
adding that there was “no bigger climate change denier than Craig Kelly, apart
from Tony Abbott”.
Mr Kelly, the member for
Hughes, led the backbench revolt against Mr Turnbull’s national energy
guarantee, in a rearguard action that forced the policy to be dumped,
precipitating the then prime minister’s downfall.
But Mr Kean said he was
going to resist Mr Turnbull’s call and vote on principle to save the federal
government….
Read the full
article here.
Another Liberal Party hard right troglodyte 'threatens' the ailing party......
Senator Jim Molan has
slammed the preselection process which saw him relegated to an unwinnable spot
on the NSW Senate ticket and warned he is "not to be taken for
granted" if Prime Minister Scott Morrison doesn't intervene to save his
political career.
Speaking on Perth radio
on Sunday, Senator Molan said he had been courted by other parties, but would
stick with the Liberal Party for now.....
"I'll stay with the
Liberal Party, but I'm not to be taken for granted within the Liberal
Party."
He would not say if he
had spoken to Mr Morrison about the possibility of an intervention, but said
the Prime Minister was "smart enough to work that out".
