More than enough has already been written about the fall of John Brogden. But there may still be some lessons to learn from the succession in that remarkable organisation, the NSW Liberal Party.

I lived in New South Wales for four and a half years prior to 2001, and followed local politics quite closely. I never met Peter Debnam, the new opposition leader, and I’d been there a long time before I even heard his name. Lack of a profile doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be a poor leader, but the places his support is coming from – the hard right that even its allies refer to openly as “the Taliban” – don’t offer much encouragement.

I did meet Barry O’Farrell on two or three occasions, and found him intelligent and affable. He was the sort of person whom you could respect for taking politics seriously, even if you disagreed with him. More to the point, he was in no way a left-winger; he was a mainstream moderate conservative. I’d put him close to but slightly to the left of John Howard, whom he once worked for. For Victorian readers, Michael Kroger would be a comparable figure.

If this is the sort of man who is now rejected as being too far to the left, then the NSW Liberal Party is in deep trouble. See this piece by Mike Steketee in yesterday’s Oz. Debnam is the 18th leader in its 60-year history, and only two of them – Rob Askin and Nick Greiner – have ever won an election. There must be few political parties anywhere that have been so dysfunctional for so long.