Why some North Shore progressives are holding their nose if the Teals win

North Shore independent Helen Conway was certainly not reluctant to respond when she was attacked by NSW Liberal minister Matt Kean for being a “fraud” who’s “teal t-shirts” should be smeared in “oil.”

Referring to Conway’s 12 year career as the company secretary and chief counsel of oil company Caltex between 1999 and 2011, Kean said: “What we know is that Helen Conway was a senior executive with Caltex and a key person steering the direction of big oil in NSW. So she practices one thing but preaches an entirely different thing. Rather than wearing a Tshirt she should perhaps wear a shirt that’s brown or black that better reflects her long association with big oil and fossil fuels,” Kean said.

Conway did not miss a beat in reply: “I‘m proud of my history working in the energy sector. This gives me the deep experience and insight required to help NSW navigate a clean energy transition.”

“Decarbonisation will be the single greatest challenge and opportunity facing our State. What we need is more people with energy experience in the Parliament of NSW - so that our government can make informed decisions about the energy transition, based on a deep understanding of what is a complex sector,” she added.

“My career is an example of the transition that is happening in Australia and the rest of the world, impacting jobs, industries, and regional communities. These comments are juvenile and are unbecoming of a Treasurer.”

INEPT: Kean’s criticisms were politically clumsy. They could easily be rejected as “violent” words against a successful woman, while also blind to the fact that his own colleague, Liberal MP Felicity Wilson, also worked for Caltex in media and government relations positions. She was in Conway’s own corporate division no less!

But this does not negate the reality that active political progressives and independents in North Shore have genuine doubts about whether someone like Conway, with her seriously impressive curriculum vitae, is just a little too much of the system to be an effective challenger to it.

Caltex was a serial polluter during the time she was there. The NSW Nature Conservation Council observed in 2014 that Caltex breached its pollution licence some 140 times in the proceeding 14 years.

“Each year, the Caltex Kurnell Refinery releases more than 6 million kilograms of pollution into the air and water,” the Council said that year.

The Council CEO at the time, Pepe Clarke, said Caltex was “a repeat offender, which appears to treat pollution penalties as a cost of doing business. Blaming the weather for an oil spill is a weak excuse… pollution con- trol systems at the refinery should be built to cope with heavy rain events.”

NRMA: Conway, an accomplished legal practitioner, was no stranger to controversy. She was the company secretary and counsel at the National Roads and Motorists’ Association back in 1994 when it undertook an aborted attempt to demutualise or effectively convert members into shareholders—a de facto privatisation.

A vote on the move was challenged by dissenting directors, led by champion swimmer Dawn Fraser and broadcaster Jane Singleton. Their legal challenge to the vote went to the Federal Court, which ruled that the prospectus for the demutualisation was “misleading and deceptive.”

As its chief legal operative and corporate secretary, Conway was at the heart of the demutualisation campaign and, indeed, fronted the media on behalf of the association throughout the court challenge.

The NRMA was riven by conflicts between advocates of demutualisation, who Conway worked with, and status quo opponents who wanted to keep the traditional membership model. Suspicions and doubts about each others’ motivations were rife. FIASCO: These issues found their way into Federal Parliament. At an October 1995 sitting, then Labor MP Robert Brown said: “The people who currently run the NRMA in New South Wales were responsible for the issue of a prospectus to its two million members which the Federal Court found was misleading and deceptive. That corporate fiasco cost the members of the NRMA about $30 million.”

He continued: “The controllers of the NRMA are up to their shonky and dishonest tricks again,” alleging that an article in the NRMA’s Open Road magazine contained incorrect information which if followed would have caused opponents of demutualisation to vote informally. “Helen Conway, the NRMA secretary, authorised that grubby and dishonest report in Open Road,” he asserted in parliament.

Notably one of the biggest critics of the proposed demutualisation at the time was none other than former North Shore MP Ted Mack, who described the NRMA campaign as “bizarre.”

KEAN PICK: Even Conway’s current defence against Kean’s attack contained a detail which raised eyebrows among progressive rivals and activists in North Shore.

In her statement, she said: “Until recently, I was also a non-executive director of Endeavour Energy, a power distribution (poles and wires) operator, who are actively involved in re- newable energy initiatives in NSW. If Matt Kean thought I was a fraud, why did he reappoint me to the board of Endeavour Energy in 2022?”

Their query in response being as follows: if Conway is so implacably critical of the state government’s integrity and climate credentials, why was she accepting government appointments as recently as last year?

One of the progressive grievances with Conway is that while she asks for, and is getting, the number two preference from Labor and Greens, she is not offering preferences in return. In her statement, she said: “Of the two candidates that can win in North Shore - I am the only candidate with a strong position on climate and protecting our environment.”

But as one rival observed to the Sun, Conway is mainly in that position because she is not swapping preferences, hindering the chances of Labor and the Greens. If Conway polls ahead of both of the Labor or Greens, she gets their preferences. But if she falls short, then in the absence of a how-tovote, her own voters’ preferences could exhaust or spray around, denying Labor the chance to challenge Wilson on 2PP.

Conway was only 1.3% ahead of Labor with less than 18% of the vote in a 600-participant Climate 200 survey released this month. But Labor’s Sussex St office has decided not to swap preferences with the Greens— which would maximise its own chances—but instead preference Conway.

Local branch members clearly feel differently about her, judging by some of their Facebook posts. One, Labor branch member Hugh Bartley, wrote “I’m sorry but this doesn’t pass the pub test” in reference to Conway’s quoted comments that she wasn’t “actually running the (Caltex) refinery,” as she was a lawyer.

Another, Labor member Annika Rees, said: “Helen Conway worked for Caltex until the early 2010s. The harms of fossil fuels were well known by then. Her sudden political ambition hardly constitutes a transition that reflects Australia’s trajectory. She has not explained how her insight will help us transition faster.”

For her part, Conway sees Kean’s jibes as a justification for why she needs to be elected. She said: “It is exactly this behaviour that people are sick and tired of.”

She continued: “The Liberal Party still hasn’t learnt that dirty tactics by politicians are what is driving the momentum for change in our state. It is why communities are embracing independents who are focused on collaboration and constructive participation.”