In the name of God, go! Advice to the Queensland Liberal Party.

Executive failed to meet the benchmarks it set itself.

In the face of this performance how did the members of State Executive respond?

Twelve members of State Executive are elected at the Party’s Annual Convention – the President, 5 Vice-Presidents and 6 members of Executive. When nominations closed last month for the 2001 Convention, only 3 of the 12 saw fit not to seek re-election. One of these is the current State President, Con Galtos.

Presumably the remaining 9 members regard their performance as sufficiently creditable to warrant re-election. The fact that they have presided over the Liberal Party’s worst election performance appears to be of absolutely no consequence to them.

It is reassuring that this complacent attitude has not been adopted by the Party’s Federal Executive. Media reports indicate the Federal Executive, as it is entitled, proposed a new administrative committee would be appointed to run the affairs of the Queensland Division in an effort to overcome its financial difficulties and endeavour to restore its electoral fortunes. With 4 Federal seats held by the Liberal Party in Queensland with margins of less than 1% (Herbert, Longman, Moreton and Petrie) the concern of the Federal Executive is not hard to understand.

The response from Queensland to date has been characteristically unco-operative. Former President, Bob Carroll, has been reported ("The Courier Mail", 7 May 2001) as saying that intervention was "neither fair nor necessary" and that Party members should be able to choose their own Executive at the State Convention next month.

Carroll offered as an alternative an Executive led by another former President, Senator John Herron, claiming the party’s "different groups had hammered out their own reform plan".

The fact that the Liberal Party’s principal informal faction had visited the current sorry state of affairs on the organisation seems to have escaped Carroll and his supporters. Why Party members would embrace a solution conceived by factions is difficult to understand.

The Liberal Party in Queensland is like a bed-ridden patient who, rather than accept the assistance of qualified medical professionals, relies upon the nostrums of quacks and faith healers for a cure. As in most such cases, the prognosis is not encouraging.

In the dark days of 1940 as the German army unleashed itself on Western Europe the House of Commons debated the course of the war and the stewardship of the Conservative Chamberlain Government. Leo Amery, a former Conservative Minister and a colleague of Chamberlain , called for a leadership change to meet the challenge posed by the German threat.

Amery declared:

"Somehow or other we must get into Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory…It may not be easy to find these men. They can be found only by trial and by ruthlessly discarding all who fail and have their failings discovered. We are fighting today for our life, for our liberty, for our all; we cannot go on being led as we are."