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Former federal Liberal Party president and NSW premier Nick Greiner has taken a Julia Gillard approach to life after politics, a comparison he welcomes. Greiner, like former prime minister Gillard, retreated from the political fray after he left parliament in 1992 and has deliberately stayed out of partisan debate.
But with Greiner’s final behind-the-scenes political task now over and the Liberal elder returning control of the NSW division to the party, Greiner has given his “last will and testament”, as he called it, to the Herald.
The 79-year-old is not unwell. Rather, he wants to give what he says will be his farewell political interview after ending his tenure as chair of the NSW Liberals’ management committee, established to sort out the troubled division after it spectacularly failed to nominate 140 candidates for the 2024 local government elections.
After nine months in the job, Greiner handed the reins back on March 31 to a slimmed-down state executive, with a new constitution and a transition document for the organisational wing of the party, aptly titled “It’s winning, stupid”, a phrase inspired from Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 (Clinton’s catchcry was “it’s the economy, stupid”).
Greiner believes the NSW division is now in better shape. But the big question is whether it is fit to win elections, starting with the crucial byelection in Farrer next month, prompted by the resignation of former federal Liberal leader Sussan Ley.
Almost 10 years ago, Greiner had a simple message for his fellow conservatives about what they needed to do if they wanted to win. If they listened, they did not take his advice on board.
The only way the party would be victorious was to claim the “sensible centre”, Greiner said after then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull blasted critics in 2017 for claiming the Liberals had lurched too far to the left.
Greiner’s view has not shifted, but his party has been reduced to a rump in federal parliament after two successive election losses. It is also facing a major defeat in Farrer, where the Liberals are up against One Nation and an independent who secured 20 per cent of the primary vote at the last election.
Greiner said he cannot explain why politics has become so fragmented, particularly on the right, but he suspects that the COVID pandemic – “governments were given a licence to spend willy-nilly” – and the rise of social media are the major drivers.
He said social media has become particularly “virulent”, largely due to right-wing influencers and commentators. However, he is insistent that most Australians are not crying out for a shift to the right.
Voters simply want “credible and competent” leaders, he said.
“One thing which I’m not repentant about is when Sussan Ley ran for the leadership I said to her, for what it’s worth, my 20 cents if you like, you have got to reclaim the sensible centre,” Greiner said.
“I think most Australians are in the sensible centre, but at the moment they are without natural representation and my conclusion is that if you aren’t in the sensible centre, you probably can’t win.
“So the rise of One Nation isn’t so much that voters want to move to the far right, it’s just that it’s a protest vote because they’re not being represented in the sensible centre.”
A key aspect of that sensible centre, according to Greiner, should be a clear position on immigration. Not populism and nor a One Nation-style racist rhetoric, but policy that reflects multicultural Australia.
“One of my causes is immigration and refugees and that’s partly because my family and I were refugees, but also because it seems to be completely freaking obvious that we’ve got a country that is a migrant country,” he said.
“Labor’s done a better job [with immigration] generally over my lifetime, and it’s certainly true that at the last federal election, the Liberal Party clearly underperformed with major ethnic communities.”
Federal Liberal leader Angus Taylor last week pledged to “boot out” visa holders who failed to adhere to a legally binding and enforceable set of national values, promising a US ICE-style Joint Agency Taskforce to identify and deport overstayers as part of a crackdown on 65,000 so-called legacy cases.
Greiner said he doubted Australian voters would tolerate a “Trumpian ICE-style rounding up of people” but he said he was confident that the vast majority of people supported the idea that aspiring citizens should adhere to Australian values.
He pointed to comments made by NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns as among the most sensible he had heard. Asked last week whether he supported the Coalition’s approach to immigration, Minns was more circumspect than his federal Labor counterparts.
“I think the general point that we want people who come to Australia who love Australia is a good principle and one that we should absolutely be upholding in our migration policies,” Minns said. Greiner said Minns was offering a classic sensible centre take.
The former consul-general to New York now intends to disappear – permanently – from political life. He still has business interests, but his main focus will be recording his family history, including fleeing communist Hungary when he was only four, for his children and grandchildren.
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