The conservative Liberal’s preselection defeat has been a long, long time coming.
After almost 30 years in parliament, capital-C Catholic conservative Kevin Andrews is finally gone as the member for Menzies, replaced by another white male lawyer in the form of Keith Wolahan.
In the end, it was a thumping preselection victory: 181 votes to 111. This exceeded the wildest expectations of the challenging moderate camp and was almost as comprehensive in percentage terms as the 51-39 defeat of Bronwyn Bishop by Jason Falinski in 2016.
Bishop notched up 29 years in the Senate and Andrews was trying to topple the 33-year run that his hero John Howard had in federal parliament (which made it into the top 10 of all time in terms of length of service).
