Sutherland mayor reacts to Liberal party stuff up 06:01

So if you live in Canterbury, Bankstown, Camden, Georges River, Shoalhaven, Lane Cove, Northern Beaches, Burwood, Canada Bay and Strathfield, you're likely not going to be able to vote for a Liberal candidate at the next council elections in September. Because the New South Wales Liberal Party didn't get the paperwork in on time.

Now, I've just been sent an email here from someone who wishes to remain anonymous, so I will keep that. But it says, on the Central Coast, we've had our candidates ready to go from the 29th of July. We were endorsed by the Liberal Party around the 2nd of August. They submitted our applications after 11am today. The deadline was midday.

What kind of clown show is this? 131873. Carmelo Pesci. He is the mayor of the Sutherland Shires on the line. Carmelo, g'day. G'day, Chris. How are you? I'm not too bad. You were once a Liberal Party man and now no longer. Does this surprise you? Does not surprise me one little bit. Been in the party for nearly 20 years. I've actually was on state exec.

And when I was on state exec the last term, you know, we worked extremely hard. The previous president and the previous state exec worked really hard to make sure that every council had liberal representation. And we said that we want to do what we did in state and the federal party where we, you know, got started endorsing people late. And here we are. We elected Don Harwin as president. One by one vote.

And I'm probably responsible for that one, mate. But, you know, this has been the biggest shambles I've ever, ever, ever seen. And I'm embarrassed to know that, you know, I was a part of it.

So Richard Shields, who's the State Director of the New South Wales Liberal Party, he put out this statement. He says, with the Secretariat resources that we had available, unfortunately we were unable to nominate in all of the local government areas that were put forward by State Executive. The status of the nominated Liberal candidates will be communicated upon confirmation, but on behalf of the Secretariat, I'd like to apologise to the Liberal endorsed councillors that were not nominated and to the party membership more broadly. As someone who's had experience

here, Carmelo, in all things liberal machine politics. How do you possibly miss the deadline? I believe that the deadline was missed and you can't possibly blame the staff that work in head office. They extremely worked. I know some of them worked till two o'clock in the morning to get this sort of stuff in. But when, like,

24 hours ago, State Exec was still with a fax ballot trying to endorse their number twos and threes on a number of councils. That is the fault of Don Harwin. When he's doing backhand deals and looking after his mates, where here in Sutherland, we had a ticket that everyone agreed to, all the power brokers in Sutherland, everyone agreed to like a month ago. And he delayed it and delayed it and delayed it and then did a captain's pick and put his mates in.

And this is why, and if he's done that here, I believe he's done it in other areas as well. I've just got a text here. Don Harwin was a useless minister. Looked like he carried that forward. Kieran said, shields and Harwin need to go. This is a stuff up at a crucial time.

for the party. He should never have been elected president. Carmela, do you believe that Richard Shields and Don Harwin should resign? Don Harwin definitely should resign. Again, I think from what I've been told, it was Don Harwin that took this project on where Richard Shields was looking after all the by-elections. You know,

You know, that last message you said, you know, Don Harwin was a minister. You know, he got sacked from his ministry. Why? Through COVID, he travelled when, you know, he's a leader. He was meant to not travel. And, you know, if he can't do the right thing then and he's not doing the right thing now...

This is why they're in that mess. I just don't understand. There's people out there now, Carmela, who are thinking to themselves, well, I live in the Northern Beaches and I'm a Liberal Party person. I'd like to vote for the Liberal Party. People live in Canterbury, Bankstown, Camden, George's River, Strathfield, you name it, people are thinking it, right? They want to vote for Liberal candidates. The truth of the matter is they will not be able to now, will they?

No, they can't. No, there's a number of councils that, you know, have worked hard, extremely worked hard to represent their community. You know, they've been members of the party for many, many, many years and, you know, given to the party, and this is their payback. You're running as an independent?

I am. What's the situation there? Well, you know, I've been mayor now for eight years. I've been a councillor for 12. I've just got awarded emeritus. So hopefully, you know, I can get across the line. We'll see how it is. We're a very strong Liberal area here.

Forget me, you know, our Deputy Mayor, Carol Provan, the Provan family, you know, she's represented council for 25 years, just got an award in OEM, and Don Harwin said she wasn't worthy to represent as a Liberal. That's sad. So you decided to jump over to the Liberal Party, as an independent, jump from the Liberal Party, what, because you had a gutful of this stuff, did you?

they're not listening to the community. They're not listening to the representatives. They didn't listen to the Liberal Party members of the Shire. You know, the leader of the opposition, our leader, party leader of our division, Mark Speedman, you know, wanted, you know, said, don't do this. Listen to what your members want. And he went against Mark Speedman as well and all the MPs in the Shire. You know, when you're doing that sort of thing, that's very, very sad. Carmela, I really appreciate you coming on. All the best for the September election.

Thank you. Thanks, Chris. That's Carmelo Pesci, the Mayor of Sutherland Shire Council.