Tony Abbott is demanding Opposition Leader Sussan Ley persist with Peter Dutton’s clean-up of the Liberal Party’s biggest state division, a challenge that threatens to inflame factional tensions stemming from her frontbench cull.

As the newly minted Liberal leader prepares to decide next week on the future of the NSW Liberals, the former prime minister urged her to defy loyalists by pushing on with a federal takeover of the troubled state outfit, in one of the first major tests of her authority.

The intervention in the state division has been controversial since it was set up in September, when Dutton and other party leaders authorised three party elders to wrest control of the branch from NSW members. The move was sparked by its failure to nominate 140 candidates for 16 local council elections, a mistake that exposed long-held worries about the state branch’s professionalism.

The showdown in NSW comes just after Ley struck a fragile truce with the Nationals following an eight-day split. The new frontbench elevated talented MPs but also rewarded loyalists at the expense of others who voted against Ley becoming leader.

Ley appointed the leader of the small centre-right faction previously associated with Scott Morrison, Alex Hawke, to her frontbench as industry and innovation spokesman after he played a crucial role in helping her to defeat Angus Taylor, who comes from Abbott’s NSW Right camp.

The NSW moderates, led by senators Andrew Bragg and Maria Kovacic, are against the intervention and want to maintain their sway in state contests over policy and picking candidates. Hawke’s group is also sceptical.

The former prime minister, now a Fox Corporation board member and arguably the most influential conservative figure in the party, declared Ley must rise above the factional infighting to side with the party administrators and extend the intervention beyond June 30.

“It’s always important for the parliamentary leadership to be bigger than any faction,” Abbott told this masthead.

In a veiled reference to Hawke, who previously helped stave off a preselection challenge to Ley, Abbott added: “I just hope that the parliamentary leadership does not exert pressure to let the intervention lapse, as a payback for past favours.”

Ley’s office declined to comment on Abbott’s remarks.

Feuding over the intervention is serving as a proxy war between moderates and conservatives disgruntled by the demotion from shadow cabinet of right-wingers, including Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, whose defection to the Liberals was partly orchestrated by Abbott, as this masthead first reported. Bragg and Hawke were elevated into the shadow cabinet in Ley’s reshuffle on Thursday.

Moderates, including state MP Chris Rath and former federal MP Jason Falinski, have described the NSW administration – led by former federal minister Richard Alston, former Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale, and former NSW state MP Peta Seaton – as a pointless power-grab from the conservative wing designed to pile right-wing members into branches.

Rath said this month that Alston and Stockdale should “go back to Melbourne”after the Liberal Party lost the seats of Hughes and Banks at the federal election, and had the safe urban seats of Berowra and Mitchell turn marginal. The party suffered similar swings in other capital cities.

Abbott, who has advocated opening up the faction-riven state division for years, argued that the administrators were turning it into an election-winning machine with a healthy membership.

“Over the past few years, some 600 people have either been expelled or denied membership, some 5000 members have not renewed, and no new branches have been established since 2016,” he said.

“Essentially, the branches are closed shops, state council is an insiders’ club, and the party has been run by factional warlords for far too long.

“Everyone who normally votes Liberal, who is interested in public life and who wants to make a difference should be invited in and given the chance to debate policy and preselect candidates in rank and file ballots.

“If our country, and our state, is to get better government any time soon, our party needs to lift its game.”

The administrators told grassroots members last week that they would open up a consultation process to revamp the party’s constitution, aiming to loosen up suburban branch structures and preselection processes to diminish the power of factional powerbrokers.

Ley will on Friday attend the funeral of her mother, Angela Braybrooks. Next week, she will meet senior NSW party members and decide on the intervention shortly afterwards.

Three federal MPs from NSW, not aligned with Abbott but unwilling to criticise a former prime minister publicly, opposed his stance on the intervention. They said Abbott was too focused on party machinations, including boosting right-wing policy issues and MPs such as Price.

“These are the same wars Abbott and [his former chief-of-staff] Peta Credlin were fighting 15 years ago. Everyone is focused on the federal Coalition and rebuilding, and Tony is still focused on NSW factions,” one said.

Another MP pointed out that the Liberals held more federal seats and won more state elections in NSW than in other states, joking that Abbott needed to “get golf lessons or some other hobby”.

Along with Price, right-wing shadow cabinet members Sarah Henderson and Claire Chandler were also dumped. Two women entered from the moderate side, Kerrynne Liddle and Angie Bell, while Gisele Kapterian and Zoe McKenzie were given junior frontbench roles alongside new SA senator Leah Blyth from far-right senator Alex Antic’s faction.

Price angered some Liberals when she defected from the Nationals to join Taylor’s leadership ticket. Ley dropped her from the shadow cabinet to the outer ministry in the role of defence industry, which has cabinet-level status within Labor.

Henderson and Price both lamented their removal from shadow cabinet on Wednesday night.

Ley defended her moves on Thursday. “As a woman leader that sends a signal to women,” she told Channel Nine’s Today program.

Senator James Paterson, a right-winger who was promoted from home affairs into finance, said on Thursday that he would be “lying if I said merit is the only consideration” in a reshuffle, noting the “political processes” where leaders had to balance geographical, gender and party room factors.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abbott-makes-factional-demand-as-deadline-looms-for-ley-20250528-p5m2sl.html

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