Can Speakman survive his party’s killing season?

3 months ago 20

Opinion

October 30, 2025 — 5.00am

There is one pressing question facing the lacklustre NSW opposition as we hurtle towards the year’s end. Can NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman survive the killing season?

There is a one sitting fortnight left in 2025, and conventional thinking is that November will be the now-or-never month to change the party’s leader, either by a mortal blow or a more gentlemanly transition. But who pulls the trigger for either scenario?

NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman and Member for Wahroonga Alister Henskens, a potential rival.

Traditional wisdom says a leadership spill would be brought on by disgruntled MPs who fear for their jobs at the looming election. Yet it could well be the faceless men of the Liberal Party who bring Speakman down. Although in this case, they are less faceless and more in your face.

Long-time Liberal powerbroker and lobbyist Michael Photios, still a man-about-town with high-profile clients including bar tsar Justin Hemmes, alcohol giant Lion and the Australian Hotels Association, continues to pull the party’s strings – not so much with internal machinations but with who should lead the ailing party to the election in March 2027.

A stunning intervention from Photios was on display on Wednesday on the front page of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. His lobbying firm, Premier National, commissioned research from little-known pollster DemosAU, which also carried out polling for Photios in other eastern states. The results in NSW surprised no one.

As the Herald’s regular Resolve Political Monitor has shown over the past months, the NSW Liberals are going backwards, largely due to brand damage from the federal election disaster but also because they are no match for Premier Chris Minns. The Coalition is on track to not only stay in opposition but to lose seats to Labor, putting government even further out of conservative reach.

What was truly incredible was that Photios made no secret of his firm being behind the polling that was presented as the necessary catalyst to blast Speakman out of the job. His chief executive, Lachlan Crombie, was quoted in the story, just to add further weight to the theory that Photios wants Speakman gone.

Photios has been close to the leadership chatter for some time. He was spotted in August, locked in a conversation with Vaucluse MP Kellie Sloane, at the eastern suburbs wedding of Woollahra mayor Sarah Dixson and former Coalition staffer Andrew Dixson. Their lengthy discussion fuelled talk that Photios was backing the former television journalist Sloane.

There is one major sticking point with the Sloane plan. She does not want the job. Not yet, anyway. The new MP is savvy enough to know that her inexperience in politics would be her undoing if she took on the leadership too soon. She wants to bide her time.

The other two candidates who could or would like to replace Speakman are right-winger Alister Henskens (who was recently canvassing moderate colleagues for support) and long-time leadership aspirant James Griffin. Of the three, Henskens is seen as the only one crazy-brave enough to throw a grenade and bring on a leadership spill. There is no indication that Henskens is inclined to do that.

Speakman shot back at the Photios intervention later on Wednesday, but rather than taking aim at the Liberal heavyweight, he blamed his colleagues, who Speakman says must work harder and take responsibility for the party’s poor showing in published polls. His comments will only serve to anger already jittery MPs, who are dismayed by the command-and-control model that Speakman’s office deploys and its stationary position on policy development.

Blame can be directed at the leader but, equally, some of his MPs are doing their best to make the Coalition’s re-election chances – and Speakman’s job – all the more difficult.

As NSW Labor talks ad nauseam about the housing crisis, the NSW Liberals remain hell-bent on waging culture wars. The latest is a push from a Liberal upper house MP Susan Carter, who thought it prudent to reopen the lid on a deeply emotive social issue which is already splitting the party.

The Liberals have shown a stunning lack of discipline by reviving debate over voluntary assisted dying, which was dealt with in 2022. It is one thing for Carter to launch a private member’s bill to change the laws around VAD, but for several Liberals to co-sponsor her legislation has shown them to be out-of-touch with the issues that voters really want solved. How can this be of any use?

In March 2021, then Labor leader Jodi McKay was in a similarly poor position as Speakman. The ALP’s primary vote had slumped to below 24 per cent, and an election win was out of reach. The Australian Workers’ Union commissioned polling which showed Labor was heading for a wipeout at the 2023 election. McKay said she had been “coward-punched” by faceless men.

Two months later, McKay was gone. She fell on her sword and was replaced by Minns. The Photios polling intervention is eerily similar.

Speakman heads into the killing season with a powerbroker who seemingly wants to end his leadership and a backbench panicked about their jobs. The answer to that one pressing question seems pretty clear.

Alexandra Smith is state political editor.