NSW Liberal party campaign in crisis after deadlines missed for council election nominations
The Liberal party’s campaign for the upcoming New South Wales local government elections is in crisis after it missed the deadline to nominate candidates for several councils.
The NSW Liberals were scrambling late on Wednesday afternoon to find out how many candidates had been affected by the administrative blunder, which meant the party would probably be missing candidates at the 14 September council elections.
The opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said submitting the nominations was a matter for the NSW Liberals secretariat and demanded the state director, Richard Shields, explain what had happened.
Speakman said he’d spoken to Shields “only very briefly” and would wait to hear his explanation before commenting on whether he should resign.
“My wish was to have Liberal-endorsed candidates in as many council elections as possible,” Speakman said.
“I think people are entitled to have the choice of voting for a Liberal candidate, if that’s what they wish to do.”
Shields is blaming “resourcing issues” within the secretariat, which, frankly, feels to me like something HE should be doing something about if he’s running the party… but whoever’s at fault, I don’t think the party has much business standing for government if this is where it’s at. If they can’t organise something this basic, should we trust them with actually important things?
