Why did Philip Ruddock, a Liberal Party elder and former Howard government minister with 43 years of experience in federal Parliament, get rolled by his party over his position as Hornsby mayor in Sydney?
Crikey can reveal that, according to the mayor himself, the area’s federal Liberal MP Julian Leeser took an active part in undermining Ruddock.
According to some local Liberals, Ruddock’s preselection loss was the culmination of an intraparty “game of thrones” with links to both a local debate over land development and Leeser’s campaigning for the Yes side in the Voice to Parliament referendum campaign.
Other Liberals said it was simply time for Ruddock, 81, to make way for a new generation — even going so far as to pull the “Joe Biden” card, hinting Ruddock is too old.
Ruddock told Crikey that Leeser declared to him in the lead-up to the NSW local election campaign that it was time for “generational change”, and that the Berowra MP had called around to other local party members to say the same thing.
“I had a conversation with him — I rang on a totally different matter — and he then proffered the view that he supported what he called ‘generational change’,” Ruddock said.
“He was of the view I should not nominate again. When I determined I should nominate, I was approached by many [local members] who said Julian had proffered the same view to them and put that to selectors. Of course I’m disappointed.”
Crikey tried texting and calling Leeser to ask for a comment. We also emailed his office, which confirmed it had received the questions but did not supply a response by deadline.
A local Liberal member who requested anonymity to discuss internal party matters said Leeser had “stabbed Philip in the back, in the exact same spot he knifed him the last time”, referring to Leeser’s 2016 takeover of Ruddock’s federal seat.
Ruddock and Leeser go way back. Ruddock hired Leeser as a special adviser, in 2004, when Ruddock was attorney-general, and the two were next-door neighbours for years. When Leeser decided to run for preselection in Ruddock’s federal seat of Berowra, ahead of the 2016 election, both men denied Ruddock was “rolled”.
As The Sydney Morning Herald put it at the time: “Both men deny a political ‘rolling’ but Ruddock will admit to a conversation between the men in his library on a Sunday morning, in which Leeser let the older man know he would be a preselection candidate for the seat.”
Or as the Australian Financial Review wrote, after Ruddock had been offered a role as Australia’s special envoy for human rights: “The blue ribbon seat of Berowra is finally set to be [Leeser’s] — and all without committing patricide”.
A local Liberal source told Crikey that Ruddock’s decision not to recontest the federal seat was a matter of “jumping before he got pushed”.
“But he refused to do it this time. He wanted them [his opponents inside the Liberal Party] to have to do it,” the person said.
After Ruddock lost his mayoral preselection on August 5, with 104 votes to 164, he said in a statement the loss was due to the influence of “property developer interests, supported by some senior party members”.
He has since thrown his support behind another sitting councillor, Nathan Tilbury, who resigned from the Liberal Party earlier this month.
In Tilbury’s resignation letter, which was addressed to former Liberal state director Richard Shields and leaked to Crikey, he alleged “senior federal party members wielded a disproportionate influence and skewed the result” and “in return, the federal seats are now free of preselection challenges”.
Two local Liberal sources said Leeser’s involvement in the preselection campaign had been unusually heavy for a federal MP.
“There was a significant amount of influence from Julian in this preselection — all he did for the last six months was to whip and whip on this issue,” one of them said.
The sources speculated that Leeser was “exposed” by his campaigning for the Yes side in the Voice to Parliament referendum, which did not play well to a right-wing base.
The other said: “It’s an interesting little game of thrones going on in Berowra that no-one is focusing on.”
Despite Ruddock’s complaint that developer interests decided the preselection outcome, there is no evidence the vote was conducted unfairly or that Waddell is a developer. Waddell, who did not respond to messages and phone calls from Crikey, declared on his NSW Electoral Commission form he had no close associations with property developers.
But there is certainly a vocal debate going on about plans to develop rural and sparsely populated areas of Hornsby Shire. In March, recently departed state MP for Hornsby Matt Kean told The Sunday Telegraph the NSW Labor government was working with the council on potential new rezonings, which Kean likened to a plan to “throw up a mini-Manhattan” in the area.
On the council’s website, Ruddock describes “[getting] the balance right between development and the preservation of our precious bushland and open spaces” as one of his top priorities.
Waddell says on the same website his top priorities include “delivery of public domain and development strategies designed to enhance our towns, villages” and to “advance sustainable economic activity in both rural and urban areas”.
The council election will be held on September 14. Just over a month later, on October 19, locals will vote in a byelection to decide who should succeed Kean.
