Labor party members in Victoria will once again be able to vote for the party’s administration committee and in critical internal elections after an almost three-year ban.
The voting rights of Victorian members were suspended when Labor’s national executive took control of the troubled state branch in June 2020, after The Age and 60 Minutes revealed Victorian Labor ministers, ministerial advisers and electorate officers were involved in “industrial-scale” branch-stacking.
Branch members’ voting rights will finally be restored ahead of the party’s first state conference, due to be held on June 17 and 18.
ALP supporters cheer after the ABC projected a Labor election win on November 26.Credit: Getty Images
The branch-stacking revelations led to the sacking and resignation of a string of Andrews government frontbenchers, including disgruntled former right-factional heavyweight Adem Somyurek, as well as an anti-corruption commission investigation that lambasted the party’s rotten culture.
But when nominations for internal party positions, including the powerful administrative committee, open at the end of January for the election scheduled to take place in the final weekend of March, rank-and-file party members will be able to vote again. The election is being held ahead of the two-day state conference in mid-June.
The Labor Party lost one-fifth of its 16,000 members over the past three years, with the vast majority turfed out after being found to be stacked by ALP powerbrokers from both the Left and Right factions.
ALP national president Wayne Swan, a former deputy prime minister and treasurer, said the Victorian branch of the Labor Party was now in its strongest-ever position.
“There has been a period of sustained reform of the branch, which has given it first-class governance practices and put integrity back into the membership,” Swan told The Age. “As a consequence of that, Victorian Labor is stronger than ever.”
The party in June 2020 appointed former premier Steve Bracks and former federal minister Jenny Macklin as administrators of the Victorian division to probe the membership, stamp out branch stacking and overhaul internal party processes.
Andrews last year asked the national executive to keep controlling the troubled branch until after the November state election in an effort to neutralise internal party distractions during the campaign.
Premier Daniel Andrews arrives at the Victorian Labor Party state conference with wife Catherine in March 2015. The number of delegates who vote at conference determine who controls the party.Credit: Paul Jeffers
The state conference, which is a key policymaking and electoral forum for the party, is the setting of some of Labor’s most dramatic and public internal battles. This year’s conference will give powerbrokers an opportunity to test their faction’s power, and determine which groups have grown and which have shrunk after the branch-stacking scandal that all but destroyed Somyurek’s Moderates faction.
The internal elections will take place to determine the make-up of the administrative committee, similar to the role of a board of directors, which will go from 30 members to 20. A new 100-person Public Office Selection Committee, which has a say in state and federal preselections, will also be elected, as well as the new party president and members for policy committees.
There has been a significant factional realignment inside the Victorian Labor Party in the aftermath of the branch-stacking scandal. Somyurek left a power vacuum that was filled by elements of the Right faction, including the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association and former senator Stephen Conroy’s faction, and the Socialist Left faction.
However, relations turned sour when Labor members associated with Somyurek took the ALP to court over the national executive takeover and ten sitting Labor MPs, who were not part of the stability deal, were pressured to leave parliament as part of a factional purge.
“The interesting thing that we will see at state conference is whether there’ll be groups that want to wind back the rules from the Bracks-Macklin review, but I don’t think there will be,” one Right faction member part of the dominant group said.
“The challenge going forward is to ensure the rules are sustainable so we can grow the party and membership base.”
Another Right source said factions that are not signatories to the stability pact had long called for members’ voting rights to be restored.
“These elections are well overdue and welcome,” they said.
The Socialist Left, which scored a major post-election coup with a group of seven MPs from the ALP’s Right faction joining the Left, will finally test their growing power on the floor of the state conference.
One senior Left source said now was the time to re-engage rank-and-file members, give them their say and grow the party’s membership.
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