Victorian Liberal president Phil Davis has warned his party against chasing One Nation to the fringe of Australian politics and urged his own, warring state executive to make peace to give Opposition Leader Jess Wilson a clear run into the November state election.
In a broadside to broadcaster Peta Credlin, his fellow state executive member Colleen Harkin, and other prominent critics, Davis said an agenda was being run through Sky News and News Corp newspapers to divide and remake the party.
“Everything that Credlin runs out about what is happening in the party comes from Harkin, who is on my board and doesn’t understand she should quit,” Davis said.
“People in the party who are trying to drag us to be One Nation-lite fundamentally do not understand Victorian politics.
“Every election in Victoria where we have been successful, we have essentially won it from the centre. We don’t win from the fringe. We cannot win from the fringe.”
Davis made the comments during a lengthy interview with The Age following a bruising week of internal party machinations which culminated in sitting MP Moira Deeming being endorsed unopposed as the party’s lead candidate for the Western Metropolitan Region in the upper house.
Having promised but failed to end the destructive internal feud which began three years ago, when then-leader John Pesutto led a vote to expel Deeming from the Liberal party room, Davis denied campaigning against her, upper house leader Bev McArthur and other conservative MPs in their preselection contests.
“I have not made a single call to a delegate prior to a convention,” he said, adding that he personally approved Deeming’s preselection on Sunday.
When asked whether the party’s best interests would have been served by preselecting a candidate other than Deeming, Davis left the question hanging.
“It’s a very good question. I have a view that for three years, all we’ve done is talked about Moira and JP [Pesutto], and it’s got to stop. If we want to succeed at the 2026 election, the party has to stop talking about something that happened three years ago.
“What we need to do is talk about Jess [Wilson]. Stop talking about Moira, talk about Jess.”
Davis rejected reports of a schism between himself and Wilson, describing their relationship as professional, and noted “overwhelming” support for her leadership among party members, leaders and office holders.
He accepted ultimate responsibility for the vetting failure which resulted in Deeming losing a party ballot to Dinesh Gourisetty hours before it emerged that the businessman had provided a reference to a convicted child sex offender. But Davis accused unknown party members of sitting on this information to cause maximum damage to Gourisetty and the party.
“I think there were people who released that information to do the greatest damage at the time, and they did. It looks like, smells like, sounds like what it was – a classic political hit,” he said.
“I have been around politics for 50-odd years, and this is the worst thing that has ever happened. This was a high profile, contested preselection and the fact that it was missed was hugely damaging to the party.
“I take full responsibility for any failure. I’m accountable, I’m the president, the buck stops with me.”
Davis chaired the Applicant Review Committee which vetted Gourisetty and other preselection candidates. The process involved background searches conducted by Aletheia Intelligence, a private company owned by Menzies Research Centre executive director David Hughes and political adviser Luke Bennett.
Davis apologised to party members for the failure and said the party would make changes to its vetting processes.
The Liberal Party has for 30 years wrestled with how best to deal with rising support for One Nation, a party which traditionally draws support from disaffected Liberal and National Party voters. Davis, who was serving as a state MP when One Nation founder Pauline Hanson first came to prominence, rejected a proposal by his old boss, former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, for the Coalition to embrace One Nation as a partner in government.
“As fond as I am of Jeff … he’s absolutely wrong. Jeff Kennett is wrong on One Nation,” Davis said. “We have to run to win government in our own right. One Nation, if we allow them to, will eat our lunch.
“If you look at the seats we need to win at this election, they are strongly influenced by migrants, whether it’s in the west or the south-east. The Liberal Party needs to be an open and welcoming party, welcoming to all countries.”
Wilson, whenever asked about the rise of One Nation, has consistently said her goal is majority government, and decisions on preferences will be made by others in the party.
Davis narrowly defeated rival Greg Mirabella to retain the party presidency last September and faces another vote on May 23, when the party’s state council and executive are slated for fresh elections.
He is also a respondent to a Supreme Court challenge brought by Harkin and three other executive committee members against the party’s decision last June to lend money to Pesutto.
The $1.5 million loan, made through an investment company controlled by the party, was provided so Pesutto could pay Deeming the legal costs he owed her after her successful defamation claim against him, and avoid bankruptcy.
Davis said he was sympathetic to Deeming, but the loan was necessary to avoid a byelection in Pesutto’s marginal seat. “It was six weeks after the federal election when we lost 17 out of 19 polling booths in that electorate. We couldn’t have held the seat if there had been a byelection. That was the decision.”
While he predicted the internal politics at this year’s state council would be messy – “it always is” – he said the party needed to move beyond the Deeming/Pesutto feud. He urged his board detractors to reach settlement and drop their legal challenge. If another candidate for president came forward who could settle the matter and unite the party, “I’d vote for them”, he said.
“Only the plaintiffs can put down their swords,” Davis said. “We have no interest in continuing this. We would settle it tomorrow if there was a pathway to do that.
“The board has to be united to be able to succeed. It is very hard to present a unified board when four members are suing the rest.”
Despite the outward impression of a party hopelessly divided, Davis said Wilson was the first leader since the Liberal Party lost government to have the strong support of her own party room.
“The support for the previous several leaders, to put it bluntly, has been underwhelming. There’s been dissension around the leader since we last went into opposition. We now have a parliamentary leader who the parliamentary party members support. That’s a big change.
“My mission is to try and get the party to focus where it should have been for the last three years on winning an election and Jess is the key to winning the election. Jess is the key.”
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Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.
