Senior Victorian Liberal Colleen Harkin has quit the party to join Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a week after attending one of its fundraisers in Melbourne, as the Liberals scramble to stop more members crossing over.
Harkin, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs who ran for the Liberals in the Melbourne seat of Macnamara in 2022, sent her resignation by email on Sunday, first reported by The Noticer. On Monday she told 774 ABC Melbourne she would join One Nation, and she is widely expected to run for the party at the Victorian state election in November.
"I think that One Nation are prepared to have the hard conversations and I think that's the ultimate difference. I think for a long time people have skirted around really difficult questions, and they're controversial questions, but I think as a country, we have to have them."
What Harkin said in her resignation letter
Harkin didn't leave quietly. In the email, sent to party presidents and dozens of colleagues, she wrote:
"I have not changed. The Party has. I cannot continue to support an organisation that has lost sight of its principles, its purpose and its responsibilities to its own members. I hereby resign my membership of the Liberal party."
Harkin said she still respected presidents Tony Abbott and Brian Loughnane, but that their leadership couldn't make up for "the Machiavellian factionalism, expediency and a lack of policy conviction that has seen the party brought to its insipid state."
Her frustrations aren't new. Harkin led five members of the Victorian state executive who launched Supreme Court action to block the party loaning former state leader John Pesutto $1.55 million, through its investment company Vapold, to cover the debt he ran up after he lost a defamation case to fellow Liberal MP Moira Deeming. In her letter she said the case, Harkin and Ors v Vapold, would continue, with Tony Schneider taking over as lead plaintiff.
On Friday she told ABC Radio she'd been struck by who she met at the One Nation fundraiser, an event where protesters reportedly abused attendees and called for Hanson's death. "A lot of people I spoke with had not really been politically engaged before and were just concerned about the direction of the country," she said.
Jane Hume's response: disappointed, and a warning on candidate vetting
Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume said the loss stung, and that she knew Harkin personally.
"This is disappointing when we lose members to One Nation, and I know Colleen Harkin very well," Hume told Sky News. "In fact, some time ago, she worked for me for a short period of time."
Hume then turned to One Nation's likely candidate field for November. "One Nation is going to attract candidates from all over the place, and I hope that they pick their candidates very well, because what we don't want to see is an election where we have candidates that haven't been appropriately vetted, as we have seen in the past," she said.
The branches walking out, and Tony Abbott working the phones
Harkin isn't an isolated case. The Liberals are losing whole pockets of their membership, a member exodus first reported by the Sunday Telegraph and since carried widely through AAP.
According to that reporting:
- About half the Curl Curl branch on Sydney's Northern Beaches has left to join One Nation. Members tried to dissolve the branch entirely but were stopped by the party's constitution.
- The Bay and Basin branch on the South Coast has also suffered multiple losses.
- In Gilmore, one former member claimed One Nation now has 500 members in the region to the Liberals' 220.
Departing members told the Sunday Telegraph they'd left because the party was "losing its way," "failing to get rid of the left," or "no longer representing my values."
The bleed has been serious enough to put the party's federal president on the phone. Tony Abbott, the former prime minister, has personally called members to talk them out of leaving. He reportedly told one that One Nation was "run more as a corporation than a democracy," and that the "grass was not always greener." Party officials are also reportedly fast tracking discounted memberships to keep people in the fold.
Angus Taylor on Sky News: "the answer is not to blow this country up"
Liberal leader Angus Taylor was asked on Sky News whether the effort to keep members was becoming a war of attrition, with host Kieran Gilbert describing a "perfect storm" of "the teals on the one side, the member for Warringah, and on the other, this One Nation insurgency."
Taylor said he understood why members were angry, and pointed the blame at the government.
"We've got a government that is letting them down, that is lying to them, that is failing on every promise it makes, on energy, on the economy, on immigration," he said. "They want to see that government gone, and they're frustrated that we didn't win the last election. I understand that frustration, I feel it myself."
He conceded members were unhappy with the party itself, particularly in New South Wales. "They want a better Liberal Party, and particularly in New South Wales, we have seen a number of members of the party frustrated at the lack of democracy in the party," he said. "I've been fighting to change that for many, many years, and I will continue to, and I want those people to stay."
Taylor said Abbott was "doing a great job at getting out and energising the membership," and claimed the party was signing up small business owners "who are incredibly frustrated right now, who are under attack from a Labor government." He said the priority was retention. "We want to see as many people stay as possible."
Pressed on how the party recovers, Taylor returned to a single message. "We have to have a credible plan, a credible team, and we have to continue to fight for this country," he said.
"The answer right now is not to blow this country up. It's the greatest country on Earth, it's just not feeling like that for so many Australians right now," he said. "The answer isn't blow the place up. It's roll our sleeves up, have that credible plan, the credible team in place. I don't think anyone else can offer that."
He argued only the Coalition could deliver it, framing the next election as the goal: a team "that pays down this rotten Labor government."
Where One Nation now sits in the polls
The defections are landing while One Nation is polling better than it ever has. Pauline Hanson's party is now the most popular in the country, leading both Labor and the Coalition on primary votes across multiple recent polls.
It's also been collecting defectors from the top down. Former Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce joined One Nation late last year. For the Liberals, the people Abbott is now ringing aren't the problem so much as the proof of one, and the Victorian election in November will be the first real test of how many of them follow Harkin out the door.
