Albanese infuriates Labor members with election meddling

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has asked Labor’s campaign chief to intervene in a factional fight for the prize NSW Labor seat of Barton, vacated by former Indigenous Minister Linda Burney.

The seat, held on a 15.5 per cent margin, is supposed to revert to Labor’s Right faction under a deal struck in 2016, when Burney entered parliament as a rising star of the Left to become the party’s first lower house Indigenous MP.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has caused a stir within Labor by intervening in several preselections.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The vacancy has triggered a battle to replace Burney, and NSW’s dominant Right faction is furious the prime minister is trying to force another candidate from the Left into the prime position.

Councillor and unionist Ashvini Ambihaipahar is the Left’s preferred candidate, while a Melbourne Cup field of candidates from the Right faction is circling, including repeat candidate Sam Crosby, former state MP Shaoquett Moselmane and current state MP Mark Buttigieg.

Albanese, fresh from interventions in Tasmania and Victoria to get candidates selected, wrote to Labor national secretary Paul Erickson on Tuesday to ask head office to step into the NSW preselection contest as well.

Ashvini Ambihaipahar is a prospective Labor candidate for the NSW seat of Barton.

The request from Albanese for the federal head office to take charge in NSW will trigger a meeting of a Labor national executive subcommittee, which will consider the prime minister’s request.

While Albanese has not explicitly endorsed Ambihaipahar, he made clear he wanted the Left, his own faction, to retain the seat. The full national executive is expected to endorse his pick by the end of next week despite objections from the Right.

One member of the NSW Right, who asked not to be named so they could discuss the preselection, said the prime minister should “not be intervening in random seats”.

“The more things spiral out of control, the more he [Albanese] zooms in on things he can control, like preselections,” they said, adding that Albanese’s involvement was “pissing people off”.

Another source in the NSW Right said the intervention would anger many in the influential faction because the state “is not Victoria or Tasmania – this is a well-run division”.

Anthony Albanese and Linda Burney.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“The last prime minister to intervene in NSW preselections was Scott Morrison – that didn’t work out well for him.”

Morrison in 2022 delayed NSW Liberal preselections until the eve of the election, forcing the state office to handpick candidates.

In August, the prime minister asked Erickson to intervene in the Victorian state branch, and less than a month, later three new candidates were parachuted in to replace retiring MPs Bill Shorten, Brendan O’Connor and Maria Vamvakinou in safe Labor seats.

Former Tasmanian opposition leader Rebecca White was this month parachuted in as candidate in Lyons while current senator Anne Urquhart was named as Labor’s candidate for the lower house seat of Braddon.

Albanese, Erickson and Ambihaipahar were contacted for comment.

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