If They Crush Antic, They Kill The Party

If the hope that the Liberal Party can be saved is not forlorn, then that hope begins in South Australia.

It begins with Alex Antic, with the members he has brought into the party, and with a result that ought to make the Liberal establishment think very carefully before reaching for the administrative equivalent of a grenade.

Antic, a federal senator for South Australia, has won the state Liberal presidency by 119 votes to 73. Nearly 62 per cent of the vote. His allies also won all four vice-presidential positions. That is an emphatic mandate from the party’s elected delegates.

The presidency puts him at the head of the state party organisation, with influence over campaign preparations, internal administration and candidate vetting.

And already, the question hanging over the result is whether people who could not defeat him through the membership will seek to defeat him through federal intervention: a takeover by the national Liberal organisation that could replace the state party’s elected leadership with appointed administrators.

What a magnificent advertisement for joining the Liberal Party.

Pay your membership. Attend your meetings. Recruit your friends. Elect your delegates. Just understand that if you eventually win, somebody in Canberra might decide your participation has become a problem.

Antic deserves better. So do the members who delivered this result.

He has been prepared to defend positions that too many Liberals approach as though they require an apology: opposition to coercive vaccination policies, defence of unborn life, and resistance to gender ideology. These are serious questions about bodily freedom, human life and whether public institutions should be required to recognise biological reality.

His presidential pitch also addressed inflation, housing and energy, rejecting submission to net-zero orthodoxy and calling for the defence of Australia’s cultural inheritance. He wants members to have meaningful influence over the policies advanced in their name.

That should be familiar territory for a party supposedly committed to individual freedom, enterprise and the preservation of institutions that have served the country well.

Antic’s achievement goes beyond taking a stand. For five years, he has encouraged people to join the Liberal Party and become involved in its branches. Those members have elected delegates to the State Council, the body that chooses the president, and gradually changed the balance of power. His supporters have gained ground in local party organisations once controlled by the moderate faction, the Liberals’ more socially progressive grouping.

This is patient political work. Meetings. Membership forms. Conversations with people who have every reason to wonder whether politics is worth their time. Antic persuaded them that it was. More remarkably, he persuaded them that the Liberal Party was worth their time.

There are party officials who should be thanking him for that achievement. Instead, some appear alarmed that the people he recruited have opinions and expect those opinions to count.

His approach to One Nation is equally grounded in political reality. Antic has argued for cooperation and kept open the possibility of a post-election coalition. His supporters see him as someone capable of bringing back voters who have abandoned the Liberals for One Nation.

There is nothing mysterious about that reasoning.

If Australians who once voted Liberal now prefer Pauline Hanson’s party, the sensible response is to understand what drove them away. Treat their concerns seriously. Give them something worth voting for. Recognise that defeating Labor may require cooperation among parties whose supporters share substantial common ground.

Sneering at those voters is a particularly stupid recruitment strategy.

Antic understands that the people who have walked away are still part of the constituency the Liberals need to represent. They want their country defended, their freedoms respected and their household budgets treated as more important than fashionable political dogma.

Now comes the test of whether the Liberal Party can tolerate its own renewal.

Before the ballot, unnamed senior Liberals reportedly intended to seek federal intervention if Antic won. One source reportedly wanted a takeover regardless of the result.

Consider the message that sends: The members can organise, campaign and win, yet their victory remains subject to the satisfaction of the people they defeated.

Those contemplating that course should understand the consequences. In my judgement, intervention to overturn this result would sound the Liberal Party’s death knell.

My prediction is blunt: Antic would become One Nation’s fifth senator overnight, and thousands of branch members would follow him. Cory Bernardi, the former Liberal senator who now leads One Nation in South Australia, has already publicly declared that Antic would be welcome in the party.

The revolt would spread well beyond South Australia. Across the country, Liberal members would watch what happened to people who had followed the rules and successfully organised for change. They would draw the obvious conclusion: rebuilding this party from the grassroots is permitted only until the grassroots actually take charge.

Why spend another year recruiting members? Why surrender another weekend to campaigning? Why keep donating to an organisation whose bosses reserve the right to cancel your influence?

One Nation would become the obvious destination for people who had just been shown that their efforts inside the Liberals counted for nothing.

Federal intervention would tell the average punter that the party establishment does not really care what he thinks. It would demonstrate a determination to stop a people-powered recovery of the Liberal Party at precisely the moment one appeared possible.

Antic has given the Liberals a chance to prove that joining, participating and fighting for their principles can still achieve something.

Overturn his victory, and they will give their remaining members a compelling reason to leave.

““A strong, resurgent Liberal Party is the best vehicle to rescue our country from the grip of socialism.”
― Senator Alex Antic