More than 100 Liberal Party candidates will be barred from running for local council in Australia’s most populous state after the party missed the deadline for nominations for the election due to a “monumental blunder”.
New South Wales (NSW) state officials say they can no longer accept late registrations for legal reasons, and one of Australia’s leading election analysts estimates that the party will likely lose about 50 council seats as a result.
Several long-serving politicians will automatically lose their jobs and voters in eight municipalities will not have a single Liberal Party candidate to vote for.
State party director Richard Shields apologized and blamed “limited resources” for the paperwork not being completed on time.
In a letter to MPs, the party’s national chairman, Mark Speakman, described the incident as “probably the worst act of mismanagement” in the party’s history and said Mr Shields should have demanded more funding.
His position was untenable, Mr Speakman added, and he had been asked to resign.
Election analyst Ben Raue says the exact number of elections affected has yet to be confirmed, but he estimates the Liberal Party is 136 candidates short of a full slate of candidates.
In a post on his blog, Tally Room, Mr Raue said those who missed the vote included 38 incumbent city councillors.
Among those who will lose their office is incumbent councillor Paul Ell, who was running for mayor of Shoalhaven in the south of the state.
“This is of course upsetting and devastating for us personally, but above all it is damaging to local democracy in the community,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
In Wollongong, about 90 kilometres south of Sydney, the error effectively ended John Dorahy’s 13-year career as a local councillor, but he says he still has hope that the authorities will consider showing leniency.
However, the New South Wales Electoral Commission said in a statement that it was bound by the law, which does not allow the commission to “accept nomination forms submitted late or to allow changes to forms submitted after the deadline”.
The saga has plunged the New South Wales Liberal Party into crisis, with senior Liberal MPs expressing their outrage in a series of speeches.
Deputy leader Natalie Ward told radio station 2GB she was angry about the “monumental mess”, while Antony Roberts told the ABC it was “abysmal”.
“It is an absolute disaster. In my 30 years in public life I have never seen anything so bad,” he said.
In a statement on Wednesday, Mr Shields said: “On behalf of the Secretariat, I would like to apologise to the Liberal-backed councillors who were not nominated and to the wider party membership.”
