The Newcastle Liberal Party has become embroiled in a potentially damaging factional war with allegations of branch stacking in the lead up to Newcastle local government preselection on Wednesday.
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Sources from within the party detailed a "major divide" between the traditional Newcastle branch and the Wallsend Young Liberals branch.
The two groups were merged into the same conference last year, with the "increased competition" for preselection disrupting the usually tranquil Newcastle Liberal Party.
The claims and counter-claims are part of a tussle to see who will gain preselection as the Liberal nominees for September’s local government elections.
Sources suggest Wallsend Young Liberals branch president Hannah Eves is likely to become part of a new-look party line-up seeking to break the Labor-Greens grip on the council. But concerns have been raised about the make-up of her branch - which has significant voting power - due to the fact that several of its executive no longer live in the Hunter.
The branch’s treasurer lives in Sydney and a vice president on the Central Coast. It’s understood proxies will be assigned to local members for Wednesday night’s preselection vote, but critics claim it’s a case of branch stacking to get Ms Eves on the Liberal party ticket. A Liberal source said “factional politics”, which had long been resisted in Newcastle, had “entered the arena”.
Ms Eves, who grew up on the Central Coast and studied at Newcastle University, said she was unable to comment on internal matters. There are also questions about Ms Eves’ place of residence after she listed Lake Macquarie councillor Nick Jones’ address at The Hill as her primary place of residence on her nomination form in April and was still listed on the electoral roll as living there this week.
Cr Jones said the pair were friends and Ms Eves stayed with him “for a few weeks” in the “past month or so”. When pushed further, he said Ms Eves had “come and gone” while she was working in Sydney. He described any allegation that she wasn’t local as “ridiculous”.
Ms Eves said that she had moved to Shortland and “recently” changed her address.
A NSW Liberal Party spokesman said the division was unaware of the branch-stacking allegations.
“The Liberal Party takes considerable care to ensure that our branch membership reflects local communities,” he said.
“However, we allow members to retain a connection with their branches if they move out of the area. Under our constitution, branch members are able to remain in their branch, after having been a member of that branch for a certain period.”
