Is ambitious Richard Marles the best hope for a Labor Prime Minister?
More “ambitious and ruthless” than Bill Shorten, Anthony Albanese’s debonair deputy is said to have his eyes on the PM prize and could be Labor’s best contender.
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Richard Marles might be best known to Australians as being Peter Dutton’s affable sparring partner on the Today Show.
In Canberra, however, Anthony Albanese’s deputy is increasingly seen as a man with his eyes on the main prize.
If, as more and more Labor folk fear, Albanese is headed to defeat at the next election, Marles has done everything to position himself as his replacement.
“He presents as a safe pair of hands,” said a Labor frontbencher who would vote for Marles if Albanese were to “fall under a bus”.
Late last month his ambitions received a boost when his allies secured a factional deal that finally give Marles something that has eluded him until now – control of the Labor Party in his home state of Victoria.
Now that deal, and with it Marles’s hopes of succeeding Albanese, could hinge on the outcome of a case to be heard later this month in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
The most astonishing thing about the career of the Member for Corio is how long it has taken even people who obsess about federal politics to see him as a contender.
“People have had a hard time getting their heads around the scale of Richard’s ambition,” said a former senior Labor official.
“It’s only begun to dawn on us how ruthless he is,” a government minister comments.
Plenty of senior Labor figures agree.
“He’s a lot more ambitious and a lot more ruthless than Bill (Shorten),” one said.
The underestimation is, in part, explained by the cultivated air of diffidence that comes naturally to those lucky enough to have been educated at Geelong Grammar.
But as many have to found to their cost, despite the foppish demeanour the alumni of that school has a habit of emerging from the pack holding the ball.
But to really understand why it has taken so long for people to cotton on to how far Marles wants to go, you have to understand the recent history of the Right of the Victorian Labor Party.
And to understand that you have to understand Richard Marles’s relationship with Bill Shorten.
Although the pair were elected at the same time as part of the 2007 Ruddslide, the Beaconsfield mining disaster made Shorten known nationally whereas Marles arrived in Canberra as a backbencher.
Despite coming from different sectarian tribes the pair share a lot in common.
Although Shorten went to the elite Jesuit school Xavier his schoolteacher mother struggled to pay the fees.
Likewise while Marles might have gone to Geelong Grammar but he wasn’t born into Australia’s upper class – his father was a teacher at the school.
That the pair would ultimately end up rivals wasn’t clear when they were elected in 2007.
In the Victorian Right, Shorten was streets ahead of Marles.
If he was the faction’s lead singer, Marles was the bass player at best.
To this day, friends of Bill take pleasure in reminding the world that if it hadn’t been for their skills in the dark arts of the ALP backroom Marles would never have got to Canberra at all.
“Richard has never been any good at the internals – it’s just not his thing,” one Labor MP said.
Shorten on the other revelled in the factional stuff.
“Bill had been having fights with Left for years before he got to Canberra – Richard’s never done anything like that,” a senior Labor figure said.
During the Rudd and Gillard governments the ranking between the pair didn’t seem to change.
Shorten was promoted to the frontbench as a parliamentary secretary in 2007, Marles had to wait until 2009.
Shorten made it into the ministry a year later. Marles had to wait until the final months of Labor’s time in office in 2013.
After Rudd was swept from office in September 2013, Shorten was the clear favourite to succeed him as leader with the backing of the national Right.
Despite losing the vote of the membership for leader Shorten prevailed over the Left’s Anthony Albanese with the help of elements of the Victorian Socialist Left close to Senator Kim Carr.
Within a short time of Shorten becoming leader it was clear his mate from Geelong was cosying up to the recently beaten loser.
Playing a long-game Marles had worked out that if Shorten’s leadership flopped, Albo from NSW would be unstoppable as his replacement in which case he would need a deputy, one from the Right and preferably a Victorian.
It was a good plan but it took a while to come to fruition because Shorten came within a whisker of beating Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 and was universally felt have earned a second go at the title.
After the 2019 disaster for Labor, Scott Morrison returned to the Lodge against the combined might of the commentators, the polls and bookmakers, and Marles was ready to make his move.
The only impediment to his coronation as Deputy were elements of the Victorian caucus Right that seemed determined to humiliate him by voting against him.
And why would they want to do that? Well, to get your head around that you need to understand that pre-eminent power in Victorian Labor politics in 2019 was not in the Federal caucus but an upper house member in State Parliament called Adem Somyurek.
And Somyurek had a score to settle with Richard Marles after an attempted political assassination a few years earlier, in which he had been accused by a fellow Turkish-speaking MP and ally of Marles of threatening him with a bread knife in the parliamentary dining room.
Despite advice from friends and allies that he should bury the hatchet with Marles – who was likely to win – those familiar with the period say Somyurek did his best to stop Marles being elected deputy with the support of his home state and faction.
As he sits on the crossbenchers of the Victorian Legislative Council today – sacked as a minister and expelled from the ALP for life – Somyurek has time to reflect on what happens to people who cross Richard Marles.
For in 2020 Marles’ close ally in Canberra Anthony Byrne executed a spectacular sting against the powerbroker when his electorate office was rigged for cameras placed there by 60 Minutes.
Within hours of these recordings going to air Somyurek had been expelled and the entire Victorian branch of the ALP had been suspended, a position which remains today.
“Adem should have made up with Richard, he was told to, but he wouldn’t listen,” a State MP reflects.
Somyurek’s destruction had the happy effect for Marles of also weakening Shorten, who almost no one believes has given up on getting the leadership one day.
“I think Bill gets inside their heads (Albanese and Marles) to a degree that is hard to fathom,” a senior Labor figure reflects.
“They’re obsessed with him,” says another who goes on to add he is sure the feeling is mutual.
Observers say that while Marles still gets on well with Albanese he has struggled with the decision making processes.
“I think it’s fair to say he’s been frustrated,” a source familiar with Marles said.
The question is whether Marles is prepared to let that frustration show in public.
While the look on his face as he sat behind Albanese listening to his underwhelming budget-in-reply speech suggests this mightn’t be far away, for now Marles is being the good soldier.
Meanwhile there’s that courthouse to be got through.
Later this month a bevy of Labor unions will argue a recently signed factional deal that will cement Marles’s allies’ control of the Victorian branch should be thrown out as it disenfranchises them and their members.
Their case is likely to be heard alongside another being brought by the state MP and Somyurek ally Marlene Kairouz that seeks to overturn the 2020 intervention.
If the ALP wins Marles and the deal sticks – a big if in the Victorian ALP – Marles’s power will be cemented and he will have be able to count on the overwhelming support of his home state in any future leadership contest.
The deal will almost certainly terminate the career of Shorten’s ally Kim Carr.
If it loses, well anything could happen. Watch this space.
Marles declined to be interviewed. His office said his focus was getting Anthony Albanese elected and not on profile pieces.
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