Crikey

“You find this ugly, I find it lovely,” Kenneth Slessor wrote of William Street in Darlinghurst Nights.

The NSW Liberals had something else to say about the area in its submission to the redistributions committee last year:

Victoria Street runs along the top of the escarpment which is a natural boundary  — see paragraph 2.20 below under the heading “Physical features and areas”. (Victoria Street also represents the boundary of an historic difference in housing style. Historically the ridge of Potts Point and along Victoria Street contained middle class villas; some still exist – eg Tusculum in Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay House in Elizabeth Bay. In contrast, mainly working class tenement housing for city workers was built on the low lying areas of East Sydney, Darlinghurst and Woolloomooloo.)

The front page of the Telegraph today screams “Silvertail slur”. The Tele says:

Besieged NSW Liberals are facing a fresh scandal, with accusations of snobbery and elitism after a bizarre attack on working class families in some of Sydney’s historic suburbs.

Liberal Party state director Graeme Jaeschke, who is already facing calls for his resignation over the disastrous Cook preselection battle, had objected to proposed changes to the boundaries for Malcolm Turnbull’s seat of Wentworth on the grounds that the “working class” inner-city should not be included in a seat that represents the east’s “beach and surf clubs culture”.

The boundary changes submission, signed by Mr Jaeschke, argues against the expansion of Wentworth, claiming it is an “Eastern Suburbs community defined in its character”…

All this to bump the Loo, Darlinghurst and East Sydney out of the new Wentworth.

Crikey doesn’t think there are many Liberal votes in those areas, but Crikey also thinks that Malcolm Turnbull has a certain fabulousness factor that will help him across the line in the land of the fake tan.

Fabulousness, however, is sorely lacking from the rest of the NSW Libs.

The Telegraph is right. Their submission to the AEC invited an attack. It was condescending and sloppy. As are the NSW Libs.

The lunar right is running rampant in the party. Their state election campaign was an embarrassment. As is the saga of the Cook preselection, which seems set to continue to cause problems, even if the fate of Michael Towke is settled today.

Rumour are running rampant that state director Graham Jaeschke, who fell upwards into the job in the wake of election failures in South Australia and Queensland, is set for the axe.

His deputy Scott Briggs has walked, because he has “had enough of the manoeuvrings of members of the right,” according to today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

The Liberal Party in the Prime Minister’s own division is in serious long term decline.

He’d better pray he wins the next election, because without taxpayers funds to dip into for Government Members Secretariats and the like, the Liberal Party’s weaknesses will be all too apparent.