Factional warfare creates a thorny problem for Andrews

ALP elder statesman Barry Jones, one of the most erudite figures in Australian political history, uses the fictional country of Ruritania to expound on the problem of branch stacking.

In his new book, What Is To Be Done, the national living treasure asks readers to imagine a Ruritanian soccer club with 300 members from Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Former Labor MP Barry Jones.Credit: Matt Irwin

The club, he writes, is signed up to a branch, with subscriptions paid for by a generous donor.

Not much is required. Once a year they are bused to the branch to vote as directed, bolstering numbers for factional operatives to wield power at Labor’s National Conference.

“Oh, and by the way, the local (ALP) council might be interested in improving the club’s facilities, and – even better – perhaps a job could be found in an MP’s office for the club secretary’s daughter,” Jones says.

One of the big problems, Jones told The Age in elaboration, is that much of this behaviour isn’t criminal.

“But you have to ask, ‘does it create a distortion in the way the political system operates?’ The answer is, ‘yes’.”

Jones is being circumspect. The fictional Ruritanians – from a central European country invented by the 19th-century British novelist Anthony Hope – are a convenient device.

Yet the “distortions” he refers to are more alive in the ALP than ever. It’s no exaggeration to say if the current situation isn’t fixed, things could get very ugly for Premier Daniel Andrews in the lead-up to the state election. Words like “crisis”, “bloodshed” and “assassinations” are now being used.

A brief recap. In June last year, The Age and 60 Minutes revealed former minister and factional boss Adem Somyurek had been stacking branches on a grandiose scale, cementing his position along the way as powerbroker within his moderate subfaction of the Victorian Right.

Adem Somyurek giving evidence at IBAC hearings.Credit:

That bombshell prompted Labor’s national executive to quickly suspend local voting rights until 2023, given party rules preclude the practice of paying for other people’s memberships.

This solved one problem: no local vote, no branch stacking. But it created another, leaving a power vacuum that opened the way for a new alliance to call the shots in relation to the allocation of seats and frontbench positions.

Under this new arrangement, Labor bosses aligned with two big unions from the Right – the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) – are now calling the shots, along with Mr Andrews’ Socialist Left faction.

For those of us in the real world, this might all seem a bit esoteric. Yet there could be profound real-world ramifications.

Former ministers Marlene Kairouz and Robin Scott. Credit: The Age

As The Age revealed this week, a rump of sitting Labor MPs could soon be knifed in their own seats in a factional purge some believe would be unprecedented in recent political history. Nominations for state-held seats close on Friday, with the national executive to make decisions on Monday.

Some of the MPs facing the axe are closely linked to Somyurek, most notedly former ministers Marlene Kairouz and Robin Scott, as well as Kaushaliya Vaghela and upper house president Nazih Elasmar.

Former minister Luke Donnellan and prominent upper house MP Cesar Melhem are also facing the axe.

But the most bizarre name on the hit list is Broadmeadows MP Frank McGuire. McGuire was recruited as a cross-factional candidate for Broadmeadows following a February 2011 byelection precipitated by the retirement of former premier John Brumby.

Broadmeadows MP Frank McGuire.Credit: Joe Armao

No one could accuse him of failing to represent his constituents. He now holds the seat with a thumping 30.3 per cent margin, after unrelenting advocacy for his local area for the past decade.

“There aren’t too many other members who can say I’ve got a track record like that,” Jones said. “Yet he is under threat. I mean that’s bizarre.”

As Melhem put it, it would be an unprecedented, large-scale assassination of sitting MPs.

“No sitting member should be disendorsed by this process unless there is a strong, valid reason,” he told the ABC this week.

The process has been humiliating, with some of the MPs learning of their position on the hit list through the media.

On Thursday, McGuire resorted to tweeting: “National interest demand ALP backs leadership in Broadmeadows in a time of crisis, not factional power plays.”

All of this could be bad news for Andrews. Some MPs have warned they would force byelections by quitting early, representing a series of damaging distractions for the government as it tries desperately to move on from the events of the past two years.

Yet other MPs are threatening to vote against the government in the upper house for the remainder of their time in Parliament. Another headache the government can ill-afford.

Andrews is so far staying out of it, at least publicly. His view is that he is Premier of the state, and not the factional secretary of another side.

For a man who has played factional politics with the best of them, this seems a bit rich. Time, perhaps, to call in the Ruritanians.

Josh Gordon is the acting state political editor for The Age.