Matt Johnston: Party time as internal wars get interesting
STATE Labor’s internal strife has become public but that distracted from the Liberals’ own factional scrap, writes Matt Johnston.
Opinion
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FACTIONAL warfare has broken out all over Victoria this week. As usual, Labor grabbed the headlines, after Sports Minister John Eren accused powerbroker Adem Somyurek of brandishing a butter knife during a heated dispute.
Somyurek says it’s a stitch-up and it was just a bit of a verbal tiff. While tensions in the ALP have been bubbling away for a few months now over a Somyurek-authored deal that will unite the party’s Right wing for the first time in a generation, no one expected it would get physical in state parliament’s private dining room.
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Eren and the federal MP Richard Marles belong to the group of Right-wingers formerly known as the Cons, who fear they will be marginalised in the new arrangement. Text messages released by that camp reveal Somyurek promised retribution for alleged “rat f---s” from Marles.
Despite his protestations of loyalty, the view in Canberra is that Marles has drifted away from federal leader Bill Shorten whom Somyurek supports. Things could now get even more ugly.
But to the relief of Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, Thursday’s outbreak has taken attention away from a nasty blue developing in the Liberal Party. Over the past few months, some Liberal MPs have become concerned by the growing influence of a group of young turks around numbers man Marcus Bastiaan. Some fear — probably correctly — that Bastiaan and his mates have plans for the state parliamentary party that don’t include many of them.
One Liberal said what has particularly angered colleagues was that some of the people recruited by the Bastiaan crew are “silent” and inactive members.
Many of the new members — their enemies regard them as stacks — have strong links to conservative, evangelical, Baptist and Mormon churches.
Those agitating for change are upfront about the membership push. They say the parliamentary wing has failed to make a dent in the government and are scathing about some MPs’ talents.
As one said on Thursday: “It’s only losers who complain.” One elder statesman puts forward a counterpoint: “These idiots will kill the Liberal Party.”
The party’s powerful Administrative Committee is now divided — and the aggression shown by a few members towards long-term MPs has shocked some.
It took last weekend’s AGM of the Young Liberal Movement to ram home the reality. At the AGM, a busload of members was brought in and allowed to vote before the opening time set by officials.
They were tactics most associated with the Labor Party. But what really shocked MPs was that the committee allowed the votes to be counted.
The conduct of the AGM was raised in the party room on Tuesday by Shadow treasurer Michael O’Brien, who apparently quit as parliamentary patron of the Young Libs in disgust.
While O’Brien stuck his head above the parapet, others seem oblivious. Perhaps these words from a young turk will jolt them.
“There’s a change in the party base and the slowest people to realise it is the parliamentary party,” the source said. That is the sort of language that makes MPs worry that this group doesn’t care if they win or lose the state election. That fear was stoked when state president Michael Kroger launched a war against the party’s biggest benefactor, the Cormack Foundation.
So what is Matthew Guy doing? After a failed attempt to kill Kroger’s re-election as president last year, many say he’s now on team Kroger. State MPs learned about the peace deal between their leader and the Kroger-Bastiaan forces when they read in the Financial Review about a sit-down between them andBrighton candidate James Newbury.
That meeting came weeks after Guy had been weakened by reports of dining on lobster with an alleged mobster — a story most Liberals now believe came from inside the party. The exceptionally well-briefed AFR report revealed Guy had agreed to demands, including to reduce the role of his office in internal matters.
Those revelations damaged to Guy within a parliamentary party that thought he was “on their side”. As one Liberal said, he simply “changed faction”.
What is also dawning on people after the weekend’s YL travesty is that Bastiaan and allies, not Kroger, are running admin. They say that left to his own devices, Kroger would have ordered a rerun of a tarnished YL vote.
April’s state council will see the young turks pushing for more power on the Admin Committee and they will probably succeed.
Guy is now in an invidious position. A growing number of people in the parliamentary party think this ultimately sells them out. One of his big achievements as Opposition Leader so far has been to head a united team. That no longer appears to be the case.
Guy has rolled the dice, by siding with those he once fought, to get his chance at winning a state election in November.
But he has to make it there first.
Matt Johnston is state politics editor
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