Josh Zimmerman: New-look Liberal powerbrokers Nick Goiran and Simon Ehrenfeld hide in plain sight

You don’t need a stash of leaked WhatsApp messages to tell you who is in control of the WA Liberal Party today. The twin powerbrokers of the post-Clan era are hiding in plain sight on top of the Legislative Council ticket. Businessman Simon Ehrenfeld and longstanding factional warlord Nick Goiran hold the reins just as tightly as the original Clan ever did. The evidence extends far beyond their own positions at number one and two in the Upper House pecking order — not incidentally, the chamber of Parliament that means neither man is directly accountable to an electorate. Ehrenfeld, who is Jewish, does not share conservative Christian Goiran’s ideological bent. His devotion is to numbers. Having spent years amassing his own in Perth’s northern suburbs, Ehrenfeld appears to have combined his forces with Goiran’s devotees in the south. The result is a super-faction with fingerprints all over the Liberals’ recent raft of preselections. It is an interesting turn of events given Ehrenfeld was the sworn enemy of the version of the Clan that placed Mathias Cormann and Peter Collier in key leadership roles alongside Goiran. So deep ran the hatred that the Clan intervened to overturn Ehrenfeld’s preselection to Hillarys ahead of the 2017 election. But with Cormann at the OECD in Paris, and Collier in Parliament’s departure lounge, Ehrenfeld has stepped into the power vacuum. His recent alignment with Goiran is viewed internally as a marriage of pragmatism rather than principles that strengthens the position of both men. In his home base in Perth’s north, Ehrenfeld was instrumental in toppling Moore MP Ian Goodenough — another stalwart of the original Clan — and installing Vince Connelly. Goodenough is not going quietly and looms as a major distraction all the way up until the next election. In Carine, Ehrenfeld swung in behind Liam Staltari to prevent the return of Tony Krsticevic. Both were members of the old Clan, but Staltari — a prominent Young Liberal — is viewed as a genuine talent with a much brighter future. Hillarys candidate Lisa Olsson has links to both Goiran and Globalheart Church, a Pentecostal congregation once loyal to Goodenough that has splintered and come partly under the influence of Ehrenfeld. Where the Goiran crossover is most apparent is the Legislative Council, where Ehrenfeld’s support landed Amanda-Sue Markham 13th on the overall ticket. Markham ran in Victoria Park with Goiran’s blessing at the 2021 election. She attracted headlines when declining to distance herself from her preacher spouse’s views that homosexuals could be “cleansed” and women should “submit” to their husbands. Markham is among several former Australian Christians candidates to secure Liberal candidacy for a second straight election. Others — all backed by Goiran — are Phil Twiss (fourth on the LC ticket), Ka-ren Chew (15th) and Owen Mulder, who has shifted from Cockburn in 2021 to the more winnable Dawesville. Also of note is Michelle Hofmann, eighth on the LC ticket, who Goiran affectionately dubbed “attack dog” in the trove of WhatsApp messages that first exposed the Clan in 2021. An internal review launched in the ashes of the last election identified “extreme religious views” among some Liberal candidates as a significant and ongoing risk to the party’s future prospects. An overhaul of Liberal preselections to hand every rank-and-file member a vote on the candidate for their local seat was trumpeted as the solution to stamping out those fringe views. But many of the exact candidates that courted controversy last time round are back. There is now a growing realisation the plebiscite model is no panacea. Multiple Liberals privately concede it works much better in seats like Cottesloe, Nedlands and Curtin — where there are large and robust membership bases — than outer suburban seats with sparsely populated branches. The decision to leave the preselection systems for the Legislative Council and Senate largely unchanged is also being questioned. One source said it had preserved “rotten boroughs” for the likes of Ehrenfeld and Goiran. Others correctly point out there is no dark secret to political success. Preselections are never going to reward laziness. The spoils go to those who put in the work. And over the past four years, Ehrenfeld and Goiran have simply outworked their detractors. That’s another fact hiding in plain sight.