Rising Liberal star Angus Taylor's promotion to the ministry on Saturday has shut down a potential internal challenge from a sitting MP, party sources have said.
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Mr Taylor, the first-term member for Hume, was in danger of being challenged after a major redistribution of his electorate and the adjoining seat of Macarthur reportedly gave Russell Matheson the branch numbers to win a preselection fight.
A NSW Liberal source said Malcolm Turnbull's decision to elevate Mr Taylor to Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister with special responsibilities for cities and digital transformation had cleverly helped avoid the stoush just six days before nominations for Hume closed.
"This is a clear endorsement," the source said.
"The PM is so clever, keeping the left and the right happy."
A federal NSW Liberal MP said the prominent endorsement would end the chance of a challenge, despite Mr Matheson, 57, having the backing of the party's moderate faction and 8 of the 10 branches in the more urbanised redrawn seat.
"The two of them found themselves in an unfortunate situation; due to no fault of their own they had half of their seats combined," he said.
The MP said the NSW Liberal executive would now override any move to make Mr Matheson the Hume candidate even if he did win party members' backing.
The separate Liberal source said Mr Matheson was a "good, humble guy" and would do "the right thing" by the party by re-contesting Macarthur.
Recent boundary changes push the Hume electorate east and end its long-held border with the ACT, as it loses Yass and Murrumbateman to Riverina and gains 48,000 voters from Macarthur including the centres of Camden and Narellan.
Mr Matheson has not commented publicly on the potential seat shift. Macarthur has become a marginal seat with a nominal margin of 2.8 per cent after the redistribution, down from the 11.4 per cent two-party-preferred win Mr Matheson had in 2013, an 8.4-point increase from the 2010 vote. In contrast, Hume has nominally become safer, with Mr Taylor's margin of 11.5 percentage points having stretched to 14.2 per cent.
On Thursday the National Party's federal treasurer John Sharp had warned he would push for a Nationals candidate to run in the seat if Mr Taylor, 49, was defeated.
Mr Sharp, who in the 1990s was the last National to represent Hume, said Mr Taylor was "one of the most outstanding candidates" he had seen in politics and should be backed again to stand in the safe seat.
"He is a member of Parliament who has potential to go to the very top of politics," he said.
Mr Sharp had doubted the ministerial prospects of the popular older MP, who spent 23 years in the police force, saying he had never heard of him until the preselection controversy arose.
Former prime minister John Howard helped get the National Party to agree not to run a candidate against Rhodes scholar Mr Taylor at the last election. Mr Sharp said he thought Coalition rules would not prevent a three-cornered race if Mr Taylor was pipped.
The potential challenge to Mr Taylor, heightened by reports Mr Matheson met with Mr Turnbull on January 29 and told him he was inclined to shift, had raised arguments over who would best claim the local candidate tag.
Mr Matheson's electorate office is now in Hume, and he has lived in the Camden region for four decades (although in Campbelltown, which remains outside of Hume).
Mr Taylor, whose work as a consultant centred around agriculture, was born in Cooma and his parents owned a farm at Nimmitabel, but he has spent the majority of his working life in Sydney before moving to a property near Goulburn with his family in late 2011. Transformation is in the family, with his grandfather Sir William Hudson the chief engineer for the iconic Snowy Hydro Scheme.
There was no comment from Mr Taylor or Mr Matheson this week.
