Eighteen months ago, the Coalition suffered its worst defeat in 70 years, losing an unprecedented 18 seats. Faced with these numbers, you would think it would be working hard on policies to take to the next election, to win back those seats.

But you’d be dead wrong. The geniuses at the NSW Liberal Party this week took a break from factional infighting to come up with a plan to win back the electorate of Wentworth, not by making themselves more electable but by simply recruiting the sitting member, independent Allegra Spender. It didn’t work.

“The joy of being an independent is that I can work across the parliament with different parties.”Credit: Marija Ercegovac

The Cambridge-educated businesswoman told me she was “not interested” in any offer from the Liberals.

“The joy of being an independent is that I can work across the parliament with different parties,” she said. “I have worked with the Coalition on IR [industrial relations] and the government and the crossbench on other things. By bringing a different perspective, the community independents can get stuff done in this parliament. On the issue of IR reform, the opposition opposed it but did not engage in a debate on it.”

She said the electorate did not want policy debates that swung like a pendulum depending on who was in power. “It’s important to have different voices in parliament – to offer a more centrist view which builds coalitions and compromise,” Spender said.

The teal independent said effective administrations govern from the centre. “The country is in the centre and the extreme elements in both parties pull the parties to the edges. The crossbench brings it back to the community.”

Pollster Kos Samaras said Spender joining the Liberal Party was a fanciful idea. “The reason for Spender to exist as a politician is that she is a representative of politics which is not aligned with the Liberal Party,” he said. “Also, the electorate has seen nothing to date which indicates that the Liberals are aligned with a form of politics that elected Spender.”

And how are the Liberals going to run a campaign in Wentworth for the next election, when the last one looked like it had been organised by a sleeper cell from Young Labor? A post-election report to the party’s election review told us what we already knew – that Liberal candidate Dave Sharma’s campaign was a debacle.