A former MLC has been suspended from the Liberal Party after he ran as an independent candidate against the party in a recent upper house election.
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Tony Mulder was once an independent Rumney MLC.
He lost his seat to Labor’s Sarah Lovell in a 2017 election.
Earlier this year, Mr Mulder, a long-time member of the Liberal Party, ran against endorsed Liberal candidate Jane Howlett in the election for the newly created upper house seat of Prosser.
Ms Howlett went on to win the seat.
Now, Mr Mulder is saying his decision to run as an independent for Prosser rankled the Liberal Party state executive, causing him to be suspended.
He told ABC Radio on Friday morning that the party’s constitution dictated that if any member ran against an endorsed Liberal candidate, they would be handed a suspension, to last “until such time as the state executive allows”.
“That was a provision of the constitution of which I was thoroughly aware,” Mr Mulder said.
There was another provision in the party’s constitution relevant to the Prosser situation, though, according to Mr Mulder.
And he claimed he himself had drafted that provision.
“[It said] that preselections for upper house seats were to be done by the membership,” Mr Mulder said on radio.
“And, of course, state executive just put Jane Howlett in there, preselected her.
“Why we haven’t expelled the state executive for nominating a candidate without going through their own constitutional processes is another question.”
During the interview, Mr Mulder also spoke on the supposed influence of right-wing power-brokers within the party, saying the membership was being “disempowered” by a state executive which he said was “dominated” by conservatives.
Liberal Party state president Geoff Page confirmed Mr Mulder had been suspended from the party and denied that the state executive had in any way erred by preselecting Ms Howlett.
“The state executive can decide at any time that an emergency exists for a candidate to be endorsed,” Mr Page said.
“And so therefore the procedures that would need to be gone through to advertise and do other things weren’t within the realms of a sensible preselection process.
“So the state executive took it on themselves to do that endorsement [of Ms Howlett].”
Mr Mulder’s successor in Rumney, Ms Lovell, said Mr Mulder’s suspension showed “there is absolutely division in the Liberal Party in Tasmania”.
“We do know [Ms Howlett] has ties to the right-wing of the party,” Ms Lovell said.
“But [Mr] Mulder has confirmed for us today that, as a moderate member of the party, he was overlooked in favour of a candidate who is more closely aligned with the right-wing of the party.”