A factional warrior goes nuclear: who is Matt Camenzuli?

Matt Camenzuli is going nuclear. The little-known member of the NSW Liberal state executive is shaping up as one of the most influential forces in the 2022 election cycle by continuing his campaign of factional lawfare against Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Camenzuli’s lawyers are in court, effectively trying to overrule Morrison’s intervention to save Environment Minister Sussan Ley, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke and North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman from a rank-and-file preselection battle that could threaten their political futures. 

With the NSW Court of Appeal set to deliver judgment this afternoon, Camenzuli sought an injunction to block the preselection of nine Liberal candidates over the weekend, which would bar the party from printing their names on the ballot paper.

If successful, Morrison’s choice candidates in key marginal seats, including Eden-Monaro, Parramatta and Warringah, would be invalid, forcing a messy rank-and-file preselection as time runs out before the election must be called. 

The court battles are the pointy end of a years-long factional war in the NSW Liberals, which pits Camenzuli, of the hard right, against Morrison and Hawke’s centre right. The Moderates have frequently worked with the hard right to lock out the centre right. Nearly all the drama coming from NSW — from Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’ blistering attack on Morrison last week to the party’s failure to pick candidates — has its roots in that bunfight.

By this point, even as court battles throw the party’s election campaign into disarray, there’s a sense all parties are in far too deep to back down.

Certainly Camenzuli’s battle seems inexplicable to an outsider. Retaining Scott Robertson, the barrister best known for grilling former premier Gladys Berejiklian at the Independent Commission Against Corruption, he’s spent thousands on legal fees so far. 

Camenzuli’s backstory gives some limited insight into the why. In a state executive stacked with state and local elected officials, lobbyists and advisers that make up the Liberal-verse, Camenzuli stands out as having almost no public profile before this run of court cases put him in the news.

A University of Sydney dropout from western Sydney, Camenzuli started up Companion Systems in 2002, a company developing software to help builders with workflow. Within a few years, he was western Sydney’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and Companion was soon worth millions.

In a sense, Camenzuli represents the post-Howard type of Liberal — degree-less, suburban small business owners made good, a far cry from the silver-tail harbourside stock or McKinsey-Oxbridge types. 

In recent years he’s emerged as a bit of a powerbroker for the hard right in Sydney. He’s also got a potential family interest in putting Parramatta to the local members — his cousin Charles Camenzuli ran in 2019 and was interested in having another crack. He wasn’t Morrison’s chosen candidate.

In a Guardian Australia profile, friends of Camenzuli maintained his motivation behind the legal challenges was a desire to bring greater grassroots involvement in party decision-making. Camenzuli’s right faction was the biggest supporter of reforms which would give members a greater say in choosing candidates.

But Camenzuli hasn’t always fought on the side of greater grassroots involvement. Last year he joined the state executive to defeat a successful court challenge brought by Liberal councillors in western Sydney, who were disgruntled that branch members had been overlooked when picking candidates for local government elections.

Retaining Robertson, and spending $130,000 of his money on that case, months later he was taking on the prime minister. There isn’t a whole lot known about Camenzuli. But his recent actions paint the picture of a factional warrior with money to burn.