Young Turks of the Victorian Liberals and their old-time toxic culture
Alleged Liberal Party branch stacker and would-be political power broker Marcus Bastiaan and his mates have bigger problems than the publication of their vulgar text messages on the front page of Thursday’s The Age.
Their approach to politics, and their cynical, texted attitudes to ethnic and religious factions they helped create, is now exposed as so toxic they are being held responsible by party elders for rendering the Liberals unelectable in Victoria.
Bastiaan’s bold strategy before the election was to try to revitalise the Victorian Liberal Party by pitching to the conservative right through the recruitment of hardline religious groups.
That plan is shredded.
Bastian, 29, and his supporters now exert an all-but worthless degree of administrative control on a party that lies humiliated and abandoned by traditional Liberal voters.
It was in the process of trying to fashion the new Liberal brand before the poll that texts flew between Bastiaan and his allies that described Indians as “curries”, apparently worth no more than bargaining chips in branch stacking, and another faction as “fag Catholics”.
Bastiaan, then-vice president of the Victorian Liberals, and Paul Mitchell, steering committee chair, have denied through their lawyers writing the racist and homophobic texts.
But the party’s longer-time chieftains, former premiers Jeff Kennett and Ted Baillieu, made clear on Thursday that the Liberals’ old guard had had enough of the antics of these young fogeys.
They called for the heads of both Bastiaan and Mitchell, and said the party was in urgent need of a cultural change.
The problem for the Liberal Party is that the likes of Bastiaan squirrelled their way so far into the organisation’s culture that it became unrecognisable to long-time Liberal loyalists.
John Ridley, a former party state director from the mid-1980s and a communications specialist, including in crisis management, pulled no punches when interviewed by The Age shortly after the election.
''The Liberal brand has been very seriously damaged by right-wing opportunists, would-be populists who are not listening to, or interested in, the community mainstream.”
He and others had looked on aghast as Bastiaan and his allies – believing the Victorian community was ready to convert anger at Safe Schools and legislation such as euthanasia into votes – embarked on a recruiting campaign of religious conservatives, including Mormons.
More than 10 Mormons, and a number of evangelical Christians, were elected to the 78 party positions.
Nowhere was Bastiaan’s poor judgment more obvious than in the seat of Brighton, blue-ribbon Liberal for longer than anyone could remember.
A political chameleon named James Newbury gained preselection to Brighton, backed by right-wing activists in local branches gathered around Bastiaan.
Newbury’s hardline campaigning proved so on the nose with voters he came within a whisker of losing Brighton to a 19-year-old Labor candidate who spent $1750 on his entire campaign. Newbury emerged from the experience by championing the idea of modernising the Liberal Party.
The racialist and homophobic attitudes portrayed within leaked texts published by The Age have exposed Marcus Bastiaan and his allies as anything but modern.
The demands for a new culture within the party can only get louder.