VETERAN Monash MP Russell Broadbent has quit the Liberal Party.
Having been dumped by his own party at pre-selection last Sunday, he has returned the favour and told party colleagues in Canberra on Tuesday morning that he will leave the party and sit on the crossbenches.
There he will join the Teals independents including Dr Monique Ryan and flamboyant Member for Kennedy in far north Queensland, Bob Katter.
Mr Broadbent did not reveal his intentions in an exclusive interview with the Sentinel-Times on Monday this week, but he certainly indicated his distaste for the wholesale move against him at the pre-selection conference on Sunday when he declined to endorse his successor, Mary Aldred.
You served with Mary’s father Ken Aldred, would you like to say something about Ms Aldred? Asked the Sentinel-Times.
“No,” replied Mr Broadbent.
He certainly wasn’t happy, but revealed nothing about the fact that he had flown to Canberra to tell his parliamentary colleagues he was quitting the party.
Federal Parliament is sitting this week, from November 13 to 16 and returns again for sittings from November 27 to 30.
It is understood Mr Broadbent is yet to take up his new seat, with the 12 other independents and single member parties, having flown back to Melbourne on Tuesday but is expected to return for the remainder of the sitting week.
On Sunday, at a pre-selection conference in Warragul, for the relatively safe seat of Monash, Mr Broadbent was almost unanimously passed over by party delegates in favour of “generational change”.
Collecting 161 votes out of a possible 193 first-round votes, they have selected government relations executive at Fujitsu and the former founding CEO of the Committee for Gippsland, Mary Aldred.
Her late father, Ken Aldred, was a parliamentary colleague of Mr Broadbent’s in the 1980s and 90s.
But almost everyone in Federal politics, for the last 40 years, from Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard through to Tony Abbott and Anthony Albanese have been colleagues of Mr Broadbent’s.
The Mayor of South Gippsland Cr Nathan Hersey was also a candidate for Liberal pre-selection and it has been revealed that both Cr Hersey and Mr Broadbent both received 16 delegates’ votes.
Cr Hersey said afterwards that there would still be “plenty of opportunities to pursue in life”.
Russell Broadbent did not issue a general statement after his loss, but he spoke to the Sentinel-Times.
“I’ve always said that the pre-selectors get it right and I stand by that after the result on Sunday even if it was by a clearer margin than I expected.
“I will not be a candidate for the electorate of Monash at the next election,” he told the Sentinel-Times.
“But there will be no by-election either. I undertook to serve the people of Monash until the next election, and I will continue to do that to the best of my ability.
“I’m enormously grateful to the people, they never knocked me back, it’s only the party that has knocked me back,” he said.
He has now taken that to an ultimate conclusion, by dumping the party which refused to support him.
Where does that leave the people of Monash? We put that question to Mr Broadbent.
"As I said to you I will continue to represent the community of Monash until the next election."
But exactly how many doors will be open to him is anyone's guess.
Labor presently holds 77 of the 151 seats in the parliament, a majority of three. If there were to be a byelection in the next year and a half, to May 2025 when the next election is due, and the Coalition took the seat, Mr Broadbent would find himself in a 'balance of power' position, and stranger things have happened.
However, his decision to move to the crossbenches after almost 40 years as a Liberal Party candidate and MP is right up there.