Image: NSW Liberal Party state director Richard Shields was sacked over missing a crucial deadline for candidate nominations for counsil elections. Image: Facebook
The NSW Liberal Party has missed a crucial deadline for candidate nominations, in an embarrassing oversight that has cost over 100 potential candidates their chance to run in the election.
The New South Wales Liberals director Richard Shields has been sacked following calls for him to resign over the “monumental debacle”.
The state executive unanimously moved to dismiss Richard Shields late last night.
A catastrophic administrative bungle
The catastrophic administrative error saw The Liberal Party missing a key deadline to file paperwork for the New South Wales council election. As a result, none of the party’s candidates were registered by the Wednesday deadline in seven local government areas for next month’s elections.
Richard Shields apologised for the oversight, attributing the failure to complete the paperwork on time to “limited resources.”
“With the Secretariat resources that we had available unfortunately we were unable to nominate in all of the local government areas that were put forward by the State Executive,” Shields said.
“The status of nominated Liberal candidates will be communicated upon confirmation from the NSW Electoral Commission.
“On behalf of the Secretariat, I would like to apologise to Liberal-endorsed councillors that were not nominated and to the party membership more broadly”, he added.
During Question Time on Thursday, Premier Chris Minns took a jab at the opposition.
“For what it’s worth, I think Richard Shields is doing a great job,” Premier Minns said.
“The party of self-reliance Mr Speaker! If you’d actually bothered to put in your nomination, you could have run”, he said.
Premier Minns’ comment sparked a wave of laughter from Labor MPs in the room.
Election Analyst Estimates 50-Seat Loss for Liberal Party
The NSW Liberal Party failed to nominate 140 candidates across 16 local government areas. Affected regions include Northern Beaches, Lane Cove, Camden, and Campbelltown councils in Sydney, as well as regional councils in Cessnock, Wollongong, and the Blue Mountains.
According to election analyst Ben Raue, the administrative error means the party will miss out on 50 seats they could have otherwise won.
Raue estimates that 38 current councillors will be affected by this oversight. This impact includes those who had retired or were planning to run again, as well as two Liberal independents in Shoalhaven who were campaigning as Liberals.
However, it does not affect the mayor of Lane Cove, who successfully nominated as an independent after losing preselection.
Raue’s analysis also reveals missing Liberal nominations in Canterbury-Bankstown, Central Coast, Georges River, Hornsby, Newcastle, North Sydney, Penrith, and Queanbeyan-Palerang.
NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman, who called for Shields’ resignation stated, “The first rule of getting elected is actually nominating.”
Speakman said the nomination process was a “basic matter of competence and administration”.
“Our party administration has let the candidates, the party members and the general public down. This is a debacle, there’s no other way to describe it,” he said.
The 2024 NSW Local Government elections will be held on Saturday, 14 September.
