Caroline Di Russo, the outgoing president of the Western Australia Liberal Party, has declared that the faction known as The Clan is now “a footnote” in the party’s history as she prepares to leave the role next month.
Ms Di Russo, who has served the maximum four-year term, said the party’s culture had improved significantly since she took over in October 2022.
“The culture is much better. The engagement is much better. There’s a lot less in the way of silly games and unproductive carry on,” she said.
The Clan was a powerful group of about two dozen people, including Liberal MP Nick Goiran, former MP Peter Collier and Mathias Cormann, the current OECD chair. It was alleged to have sought to influence office-bearing positions and candidate selections.
The faction became a major source of tension after the leak of about 700 pages of its WhatsApp records following the Liberals’ disastrous 2021 election result.
Asked whether The Clan remained active, Ms Di Russo said: “The Clan, as it was, is long consigned to history.”
She acknowledged that factional competition remained a feature of politics, arguing it could be constructive. But she said the group’s previous structure and influence had disappeared.
“The makeup of the factions from when everything broke in 2021, 2022, that there is a footnote of Liberal Party history, frankly,” she said.
New WA Liberal president was in The Clan group
Ms Di Russo will be succeeded by Perth economist and former Young Liberals president Aiden Depiazzi, who is due to be elected unopposed at next month’s state conference.
Mr Depiazzi was a member of The Clan WhatsApp group. He declined to comment, citing party rules stating that only the current president or state director can speak on behalf of the party.
A party insider said the factional divisions were now broadly split between branches in wealthy western suburbs and the rest of the party.
Ms Di Russo pointed to changes to lay membership as among the measures that had helped curb branch stacking. The party banned membership payments outside immediate families, limited moves between branches to once every 12 months and doubled the membership fee from $25 to $50.
“While that might not seem a lot to go from $25 to $50, it does provide a financial restraint,” she said.
She also cited third-party vetting of candidates and improved fundraising as important reforms, saying the party was now on a stronger footing ahead of the 2028 federal and 2029 state elections.
Despite the internal changes, Ms Di Russo conceded that the Liberals continued to face electoral difficulties. She said limited resources made it hard to deliver significant gains quickly, although she believed the party had established a strong foundation.
Ms Di Russo will remain involved in the federal Liberal Party as one of its vice-presidents. She said the rise of One Nation was concerning, particularly because voters unhappy with the Albanese government could move elsewhere if the Liberals failed to provide a credible alternative.
“When it’s establishment versus anti-establishment, as opposed to you know just the blue and red that we’re used to, you’ve got to do the work, but you’ve also got to really win back that credibility and trust,” she said.
She said the relationship between the Liberals and One Nation was more complicated than a straightforward division between allies and opponents, arguing that both parties should focus on removing what she described as poor Labor governments.
