Supreme Court challenge looming over Victorian Labor factional peace deal

A showdown over preselection in Victorian seats is headed to the Supreme Court as Labor’s factional rivals fire up.

A Supreme Court challenge to Anthony Albanese’s bid to rush through preselections for Labor’s safe seats in Victoria is set to be lodged as early as Thursday.

Eight unions including the CFMEU, the Australian Workers’ Union and the United Firefighters Union are behind the explosive legal action.

They have called in top QC and former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel to represent them.

They want an injunction to stop the three-day preselection process — due to finish on Friday afternoon – as part of a broader legal challenge to last year’s federal intervention that gave Labor’s national executive control over the Victorian branch of the party.

Anthony Albanese has ordered the preselection for all safe Labor seats in Victoria to be finished this week.

The preselection stoush is centred on the new Melbourne electorate of Hawke, with the national executive poised to hand the plum seat to former state secretary Sam Rae, prompting the court action from factional rivals who are pushing for a female candidate.

The Herald Sun understands Victorian Corrections Minister Natalie Hutchins is considering nominating.

Another name in the frame is believed to be former state MP Kay Setches, a minister in Joan Kirner’s government.

Ms Hutchins she would not stop “fighting for equality — which is 50 per cent of women in our parliaments”.

“A number of experienced Labor women will be putting their nominations for the new seat of Hawke and the ALP should give serious consideration to their nominations and our commitment to reaching a 50 per cent quota by 2025,” she said.

Kay Setches could be nominating.

Natalie Hutchins is also in the mix.

Ms Setches, who was central to the creation of Labor's affirmative action targets in the 1990s to bring more women into parliament, urged other women to run because she could not bear to see Hawke “go to the boys”.

The 76-year-old said there had been a bid by powerful men to decide the preselection and ignore rank-and-file members, and that if Mr Rae won, it would see Labor’s federal female representation “go backwards for the first time in history”,

“Joan Kirner would be incandescent with rage and I am as well,” Ms Setches told the Herald Sun.

Sources close to the union court action told the Herald Sun an application was likely to be lodged on Thursday or Friday morning.

The Health Services Union, the Health Workers Union, the Plumbing and Pipe Trades Employees Union, the Communication Workers Union and the Meat Industry Employees Union are also part of the challenge.

Mr Rae’s candidacy is backed by a new internal power-sharing agreement between Daniel Andrews’s Socialist Left faction and the Labor Unity group headed by deputy federal leader Richard Marles.

The Herald Sun understands powerful SDA union boss Michael Donovan, who is part of the stability deal, told a meeting on Wednesday that the National Union of Workers grouping was now a non-existent faction, which was vigorously disputed by Labor MP Tim Richardson.

It came after senior state minister Martin Pakula — who is part of the NUW faction — criticised the new agreement, saying it had left him in the dark about his preselection.

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