Making political assumptions based on one byelection result is asking for trouble, but independent Jacqui Scruby’s victory in the heartland seat of Pittwater on Saturday must be daunting for a Liberal Party shaping up to fight a federal election while simultaneously trying to reform a moribund, scandal-ridden NSW branch.
To some extent, the Liberals were caught unprepared when their man in Pittwater, Rory Amon, resigned after just one year and five months as the local MP after being charged with child sexual abuse charges – which he denies and vows to fight.
Soon-to-be independent MP Jacqui Scruby.Credit: Natalie Boog
But whatever Amon’s impact on voting intentions, the party made it harder to appear competent when the state headquarters failed to properly nominate a raft of candidates for last month’s council elections, including Georgia Ryburn – the former deputy mayor of Northern Beaches Council – who lost her position thanks to the snafu; and despite being touted as a one-day Liberal star she never quite managed to shake the impression that her Pittwater nomination was compensation for the idiocy of others.
Backed by Climate 200, Scruby just missed beating Amon in 2023, and her weekend victory can be interpreted as another in the slow but steady frittering away of NSW federal and state Liberal heartland seats.
Pittwater was one of three byelections on Saturday, with Epping and Hornsby being easily retained by the Liberals. Labor did not bother fielding candidates. But Scruby won big time, and the Pittwater result surely carries state and federal warnings for the Liberals.
Shortly before the last federal election, we noted the geometry of Australian politics had changed, and the most intense competition was not between the two main parties, Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition, but between Liberal candidates and small “l” liberal independents. They, and the teals, target people who have previously voted Liberal but who feel the party moved too far to the right and lost touch with its core values of small, honest government under Scott Morrison.
The Liberals have since lost both federal seats covering the northern beaches – Warringah in 2019, and Mackellar and abutting North Sydney in 2022. The state seat of Wakehurst went to independent local mayor Michael Regan last year, and now Pittwater has gone. The Liberals seemed resurgent in the local council, but the August omnishambles of the local government nominations failure saw public faith shrivel and three men appointed to a committee of management to replace the NSW state executive.
The move hardly quietened fears of a right-wing resurgence and return to the days of branch stacking with lobbyists moonlighting as party officials, especially as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had driven the intervention.
Dutton seems content to turn from the troubled Liberal heartland and chase votes in Labor strongholds. He has doubled visits to western Sydney this year. But Scruby’s Pittwater win shows independents in his heartland are causing far more damage than he has wreaked on Labor.
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