While many of his former colleagues were furious this week, local councillor Nathan Tilbury has been feeling pretty happy as a former Liberal.
Two days before the party failed to nominate more than 130 candidates for next month’s New South Wales local government elections, Tilbury handed in his resignation.
After three terms on Hornsby Shire council, he says he’d already decided to run as an independent at the next election on 14 September.
He says he decided to campaign for mayor after securing the “surprise” backing of the outgoing mayor and Liberal elder statesman, Philip Ruddock, who will not contest the mayorship at the upcoming elections after losing a preselection ballot.
“He did contact me on Sunday and said he would be supporting me. He didn’t elaborate on that,” Tilbury says.
“Philip and I are very, very different people, but we do share a passion for the bushland shire [and] for doing what we think is right for the community.”
Tilbury says he nominated himself on Tuesday.
It could have been fate intervening – the Liberals missed the noon Wednesday deadline to submit their own paperwork and the administrative fiasco cost one of its candidates for Hornsby their spot on the ballot paper.
Guardian Australia understands this person was going to run at the bottom of the party’s ticket in their ward.
“I really think the Liberal party hasn’t focused on local politics, local government ever. And I think this might be a result of that,” Tilbury says.
“But, you know, they’ve really been looking at state and federal [elections] as their priorities and, as a result, they dropped the ball.”
Tilbury says he had been unhappy with the Liberals’ direction in Hornsby for a while. Development has become a sore point among residents and councillors in the local government area on Sydney’s northern fringe.
Earlier this month, Ruddocklost his party’s backing to run for another term as mayor of Hornsby. The former federal Liberal minister claimed property developers, supported by people within his own party, were behind a “professional campaign” to oust him.
The 81-year-old lost a preselection ballot to Liberal councillor Warren Waddell by 60 votes on Monday, meaning he could not re-contest the mayorship.
At the time, Ruddock claimed the campaign to remove him had been managed by developers who wanted to rezone and build on Hornsby’s semi-rural suburbs even before there was adequate infrastructure in place to support additional homes.
Tilbury says Ruddock’s ousting as mayor was the “last straw” for him as a Liberal party member.
In a phone call with Guardian Australia on Friday, Ruddock says his decision to back Tilbury’s bid for mayor is “certainly not” payback for the Liberals’ decision.
“My view is that I should endorse the candidate that I think as closely aligns with the values that I have seen to be important,” Ruddock says.
“It’s not about me … I have made a judgment call not to run separately as an independent. I have made a judgment call to back my deputy [Tilbury].”
Ruddock says he’s still a member of the Liberal party. Asked twice if he’s going to quit, he responds the same each time: “I’ve been a member of the party for 64 years, and it’s pretty hard for me to say that I am not a Liberal.”
He says that, as a former party president, he has “elected” not to comment on the crisis engulfing the Liberals.
“I know that there are often conflicting demands between the leadership of the party nationally that want to see readiness for future federal elections, and sometimes there are competing interests,” he offers.
The Liberals’ NSW state director, Richard Shields, lost his job over the mistake.
He said on Thursday afternoon his focus had been on the upcoming federal election, and the party president, Don Harwin, had volunteered to run the local government election process.
“I had full trust that this would be delivered successfully,” Shields said in a statement.
“Calls for my resignation are premature as there must be a proper review of the nomination process to establish the full facts.”
Later that night, Harwin issued his own statement saying the party’s executive had unanimously decided to terminate Shields’ employment over his “failure to meet such a fundamental responsibility”.
The Liberals have vowed to refund all affected candidates their nomination fees and “thoroughly investigate” the bungle, which will leave eight councils with no Liberal representation at all.
