Class action possible over NSW Liberal council nomination debacle

Candidates who missed out on nominating for council elections after an embarrassing head office blunder are considering a potentially costly class action against the NSW Liberal Party.

About 150 people are believed to have had their local government aspirations dashed after the party missed a crucial deadline to file paperwork last week.

And, on Saturday the NSW Electoral Commission denied a request from party president Don Harwin that the nomination period be extended.

There are predictions the disaster could cost the party more than 50 winnable seats in 16 local government areas and destroy people’s political careers.

Lawyer and former Waverley mayor George Newhouse says some of the affected candidates are considering legal action to recover the loss of potentially four years of councillor fees and the money already spent donating to the party and on campaigns.

“Those individuals are really suffering as a result of what’s happened that Liberal Party head office,” he said on ABC radio.

“I don’t want to breach confidence as people are very scared of their political careers, and you can only imagine taking on the Liberal Party is a big ask, so I’m not going to quote numbers, but there are around 150 people affected, and they’ve all paid application fees and they’re all suffering some kind of loss right now.

“I’ve been told that some individuals have personally donated thousands of dollars through central coffers of the Liberal Party towards their campaign. They’ve had friends and family donate thousands of dollars. Now what’s going to happen to those funds, are they going to be refunded to the individuals?“

Mr Newhouse said he and others were investigating whether a class action was viable to recover people’s losses from the Liberal Party.

“I’ve been speaking to barristers and early next week we should be in a position to say whether there is a case in these circumstances, and we’re still learning about what went wrong at Liberal Party headquarters to work out whether that failure can lead to an actionable case, then we have to work with lead plaintiffs to develop a class action and then you proceed in the Supreme Court of New South Wales.”

Mr Newhouse said it would have been gut-wrenching for the would-be candidates to have been failed in this way.

“This could destroy people’s political careers. It’s put them out of pocket and it’s a shambles and it’s actually a disgrace in terms of democracy, people are entitled to fight.”

Already, the debacle has claimed the scalp of NSW Liberal Director Richard Shields who was sacked after the “mind-boggling” failure.

In a statement issued after an emergency meeting late on Thursday night, the party’s state president Don Harwin said its executive had unanimously decided to terminate Shields’ employment over the fiasco.

“The state director was allowed to explain the circumstances to the state executive,” it said.

“This failure to meet such a fundamental responsibility has rendered his position untenable. As a result the state executive has unanimously resolved to terminate the state director’s employment with immediate effect.”