Why is SA’s Liberal leader washing her hands of party president brawl?

Ugly scuffles over the SA Liberal Party presidency are spilling into the public arena, Mike Smithson examines Ashton Hurn’s hands off response.

The month of August has finally arrived and that means the SA Liberals will soon be electing new office bearers.

It’s hoped these people will take them into a new age where their political party is capable of being elected.

In accordance with the Liberal constitution, all the top jobs are up for grabs all the way down to those elected to specialist committees.

Parliamentary leader Ashton Hurn has been widely reported as not publicly backing the red hot, but contentious and likely nomination of firebrand conservative Senator Alex Antic as party president.

Whether she likes Antic, which she probably doesn’t particularly, there’s no reason for her to nail any colours to the mast, still weeks out from the party’s membership vote.

Antic is unlikely to be the only candidate, but until nominations close, Hurn’s opinion counts for nothing.

Surely, she would need to see the full field on offer before indicating a favoured preference, even if she had one.

The contenders could change over coming weeks, so what’s the point of locking into Antic, or anyone else, at this point?

Rumblings from within the party are that the moderates and those described as “sensible” conservatives have joined forces to coax an alternative to step forward, for one, reports repeatedly throwing former Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer into the mix.

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