Labor factions at war over prized seat of Gorton

Two powerful Labor-linked unions will square off in a brawl over preselecting a woman for the safe Labor seat of Gorton in Melbourne’s outer western suburbs.

Gorton has been held by former cabinet minister Brendan O’Connor, who has announced his retirement, since it was created in 2004. Labor won the seat with 60 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in 2022.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants the ALP national executive to take responsibility for Victorian preselections.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Transport Workers’ Union, closely aligned with Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles, is in the box seat to pick O’Connor’s likely replacement.

But the Australian Workers’ Union, closely linked to NDIS and Government Services Minister Bill Shorten, will also attempt to install one of its operatives in the seat.

The collapse of a so-called “stability agreement” in Victoria has led to the Right-aligned unions working against each other in the preselection contest.

Multiple TWU sources, who asked not to be named, said the union planned to stand a woman in the seat but were tight-lipped about the candidate’s identity.

And a source in the AWU said the union was also planning to install their own woman in the seat, and the identity of that candidate is also a closely guarded secret. A date for preselection has not been set.

A source in the AWU said: “We are definitely running a woman, too. We will probably be overruled by the national executive and it [the seat] will go to the TWU, but we are going to be running a campaign about local democracy”, alluding to the fact that Victorian Labor Party members will not vote in rank-and-file preselections, as happened in 2018 and 2021.

A source in the TWU said the AWU “might run someone, but it will be inconsequential” because Labor’s 21-member national executive would decide who gets preselection.

While Shorten is a former leader of the federal Labor Party, his influence within Victorian Labor’s Right faction has faded in recent years. At the same time, Marles’ clout has strengthened as he stepped into the role of deputy prime minister.

Marles and Shorten declined to comment.

The fight for the prize seat comes after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote to Labor national secretary Paul Erickson at the weekend and asked the national executive to take over the preselection process in Victoria, citing the proposed abolition of the seat of the Labor-held seat of Higgins and boundary changes to more than 30 other federal divisions across the state.

Albanese wrote in a letter to Erickson, that was obtained by this masthead, that the proposed boundary changes in Victoria “affect every single division that elected a Labor MP in 2022, and nearly one in 10 Victorian electors will be shifted into a different electorate”.

“In these circumstances, it is appropriate for the ALP national executive to assume responsibility for conducting federal preselections in Victoria,” the prime minister wrote.

Another publicly unstated reason for the intervention is that the scandal-plagued construction division of the CFMEU still has members sitting on Victoria’s 100-member public office selection committee which normally helps select and sign off on Labor candidates.

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