Anthony Albanese faces ‘buy local’ bid on energy

The AMWU is pushing to tie Anthony Albanese to a new renewables policy that would require 80 per cent of content for new projects be made locally.

ALP party president Wayne Swan. Picture: Iain Curry

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union is pushing to tie Anthony Albanese to a new renewabl­es policy that would requir­e 80 per cent of content for future projects to be made in Australia­.

The AMWU is proposing amendments to Labor’s draft policy­ platform that will also force the party to prioritise using lithium and rare earth minerals ­locally. “Rather than exporting these highly sought-after commodities, we should be developing a manufacturing industry around them and creating good quality, skilled jobs in regional areas,” the proposed­ amendments say.

The amendments, which have been presented to the party’s national policy forum, were created by the Left-faction union’s Victorian division and are backed by national secretary Steve Murphy.

“A future Labor government will mandate that 80 per cent of the content on all future renewable energy projects will be manufactured in Australia,” the proposal says. “This will help create long-term jobs in the renewable sector whilst providing a just transition for workers currently working in the energy sector.”

Mr Murphy has been criticised by Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon and the mining union for striking a pro-renewables alliance with the Labor Environment Action Network.

“If the AMWU amendments are included in the ALP platform, the platform will be stronger than it ever has been on local jobs and a manufacturing-led recovery,” Mr Murphy told The Weekend Australian.

Unions have been pushing to expand the draft policy platform after The Australian revealed a preliminary version was 99 pages, about a third of the size of the 2018 platform. The Australian revealed this month that Labor’s Right faction was demanding pro-gas and coal amendments to the draft platform, which will be finalised by the end of the year.

“It is important to reject the false choice between resources and renewables and acknowledge the role of gas in firming and ­expanding renewable energy use,” a document endorsed by Right-faction unions says.

The draft policy platform will be debated, and more amendments proposed, by delegates representing unions and party members at a “virtual” national conference to be held by Easter.

A Labor government is bound by the policy platform that is endorsed­ at national conference.

ALP president Wayne Swan said Labor’s national executive had endorsed the proposed online conference, which controversially excludes a vote on party positions. “We have put in place a number of building blocks ­nationally for our conference, which is a big step forward for the first online conference in history,” Mr Swan said.

The national executive also endorsed recommendations on reforming the Victorian branch from a report compiled by party luminaries Steve Bracks and Jenny Macklin.

Mr Bracks and Ms Macklin were appointed administrators of the Victorian branch and tasked with compiling a report recommending reforms to its structure after allegations of branch stacking were levelled at former ­Andrews government minister Adem Somyurek. More than 1700 members have been expelled from the party but there are internal criticisms that legitimate members were ­wrongly targeted.

The Bracks-Macklin audit of the Victorian branch has made 37 recommendations to stamp out branch stacking, including a requirement for mandatory ID checks for new members, who have to attend a branch meeting in their first 12 months and pay electronically rather than with cash. New members will need to wait two years to receive voting rights on preselections and ballots on the federal parliamentary leader. No more than 20 new members in a branch can accrue voting rights in a single month.

A party monitor will be ­ap­pointed to resolve member complaints and undertake integrity reviews of the membership. An interim governance committee has been appointed by the national executive to run the branch until a state conference is held between January and May 2022.

Controversially, party members are unlikely to receive their voting rights back until 2023, leading to confusion about what would happen if there was a ­challenge to Mr Albanese’s ­leadership.