Bid to halt branch stacking ... or factional power grab?

Victorian Labor removes voting rights of central branch members as delegate slams decision as ‘sad day for the party’.

‘A sad day for the Labor Party’ ... Kingston councillor Steve Staikos. Picture: Penny Stephens

The Victorian branch of the Labor Party has passed a motion ending voting rights for several thousand members of its central branch.

The motion is seen by some ALP members as a power grab by factional bosses who are unable to control the unaligned branch, while others see it as a means of cracking down on branch stacking and ensuring engagement among all party members.

The rule change passed on the voices at Saturday’s state ALP conference, moved by state Labor staffer Nick McLennan from Mr Somyurek’s powerful “mods” faction on the Right, and seconded by the secretary of the Socialist Left faction, Matt Hilakari.

The central branch is largely made up of party members who have joined online, rather than joining a geographic branch of the ALP.

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“For the last probably five years (there) has been a fair bit of chaos around the central branch membership,” Mr Hilakari told the conference.

Mr McLennan said many who had attempted to join the party through the central branch had found their applications stalled due to questions over compliance.

“There’s been constant investigations and it’s been very, very messy, and it’s actually been a deterrent from joining the party, so I think this really cleans up our rules, and it’ll note to head office and those that are responsible to get on with the job that they’re tasked to do,” Mr McLennan said.

Victorian Labor independent faction secretary Eric Dearricott said he had initially supported giving voting rights to central branch members.

“Unfortunately the system hasn’t worked as well as we would have hoped, so I think this is a positive motion to move us forward to beyond a very difficult situation,” Mr Dearricott said.

Steve Staikos from the NUW Right faction said it was a “sad day” that the Victorian ALP had “given up on the project of broadening and increasing the membership of the Labor Party through a central branch participation process”.

“The fact is we’ve got thousands of people sitting in ‘irregularities’ who have tried to join central branch,” Mr Staikos said.

“These are people who work in our unions, they work in electorate offices, they were so annoyed by the result of the federal election that the next thing they did the next day was join the Labor Party, and they’re all sitting there in ‘irregularities’, and there is no way for them in because there is people in this room who don’t want them to have a vote in the Labor Party. That’s the fact of what’s going on here.

“What we’re saying is because we’re dysfunctional and because we’re not able to manage an orderly process for people who pay their own membership by traceable means and prove their AEC enrolment, that we don’t want them to be full, participating members of the Labor Party.

“What this amendment does is change the rules to basically say to people, ‘if you don’t turn up to a branch meeting if you’re invited by that president or secretary and ushered into the party through those greased wheels, you’re not welcome, and that is a sad day, I think, for the Labor Party.”

Veteran Labor Right figure Garth Head said the central branch was initially supposed to offer an associate membership system at a cheaper rate, from which branches and Federal Electorate Assemblies could recruit and engage members.

“ALP state office needs to reorganise so that there is support for local branch and FEA organisations to make sure that they abide by the rules as we used to do when we had organisers, so called, not the fragmented numbers case where people get their mates to sign on through central branch, use their credit cards and then give them money to cover the cost,” Mr Head said.

“Now that’s not happening in every case, clearly, but it’s a systematic rort that there is no solution to other than reverting to our traditional tried and true structures.”