Scott Morrison's Controversial Preselection Battle

Morrison went for preselection in a very safe Liberal seat of Cook, which is

the shire.

Right.

Mm-hmm, yep.

The conservative kind of part of the shire.

He beat a guy called Michael Tok in the, in the ...

He ended up winning, to, to get the preselection.

But in the first count, when they first had the ballot

and first had the numbers-

Yeah

... Michael Tok got 82 votes, Scott Morrison got

eight. Now Michael-

Well, how did he win then?

Well, actually, do, do you wanna just pull up the, um, the,

the thing?

So, and Michael Tok, who was this Lebanese Christian

community leader.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right? That straight after the preselection,

there was a

media and an internal Liberal Party campaign to overthe-- turn the result.

And it got overturned, and Morrison got made the candidate.

Hang on, but the guy got 80 something percent.

How can they do that?

Yeah. He got 82 to eight. Well, this is the bit that has never been told

before.

Scott Morrison's lieutenants, and I'm sure with Scott Morrison's

knowledge,

turned to the Labor Party-

Yeah

... and asked them to prepare the dirt file

on his political opponent, to be able to get rid of the guy,

uh, and actually have him disendorsed as

Liberal Party candidate.

Really?

I know this 'cause I was the one who put the file together

on Michael Tok.

Oh, you put it together?

I put the file together, right? Against Michael Tok.

I think the prime minister deserves to give this guy an apology.

I've seen a lot of dirty things in politics.

This is dirty.

And preselection get very, very dirty. Right?

But you've never seen this happen before, where someone has been-

I've never had the Liberal Party-

Yeah

... come to us and ask for dirt on one of ...

To fight one of their own internal opponents.

Mm. Mm.

But then to dethrone that guy

for, um, ScoMo to become the, the member-

Yeah. Well, this guy won. This guy ...

If you, if you actually just click on his profile.

Sam, why was he, why was Michael Tok so much more popular than

Scott Morrison-

Well, look, okay

... like, in, in the first preselection?

See, if you said, if you look there, he describes himself husband, father,

engineer, proud Lebanese Australian.

Won the 2007 Liberal preselection for Cook, beating Scott Morrison, 82 votes

to eight.

Yeah.

Which is true. And then it got overturned.

Um, look-

How do they overturn that? I mean, with the dirt file.

They went, they ... Well, they effectively said that he ...

They used the, uh, they, they called him a branch stacker.

They went through his history. He, by the way,

they dumped a whole bunch of media

stories against him, which he sued and got a $100,000 settlement for

afterwards.

Right.

They ran-

But they never, they never got back his spot

... the biggest dirt campaign that I've been around in dirt campaigning.

On their own party member.

Of course. That's where it gets really vicious.

The thing is, and I've been saying this,

I would never underestimate Scott Morrison,

'cause I would never underestimate

a guy who would turn to his political opponents to

take out one of his own.

Mm.

A guy that will do that will do anything.

And mate, this is, this is not a guy to be underestimated, right?

I mean, if you're gonna do that, right, there is, there is no line that you won't

kinda cross. And