Josh Bornstein quits bid for Labor Senate spot

Would-be Labor senator Josh Bornstein’s bid for parliament has been wrecked by his frenetic use of ­social media.

Josh Bornstein.

Anthony Albanese is facing a pre-election blow-up in the Victorian ALP after would-be senator Josh Bornstein’s bid for parliament was wrecked by his frenetic use of ­social media.

The ALP factions accepted Mr Bornstein’s decision to quit his run for politics after The Australian revealed some of the 27,700 tweets he had fired off, many of which were critical of Labor and senior party figures.

While he had the in-principle support of a majority of Left ­unions, his candidacy to run against powerbroker Kim Carr was destroyed when the extent of his social media footprint became clear. The Australian revealed he had attacked Labor frontbenchers Chris Bowen and Penny Wong, likened a unionist to a dog and voted against the ALP in 2013.

When Mr Bornstein was ­exposed attacking his potential ­future colleagues he had as many as 27,700 tweets in his account.

This appeared to have shrunk to just 576 by Monday afternoon, although many of the tweets may be retrievable and some ALP members have warehoused photographs of some of them.

A majority of Left unions ­appear likely to back another candidate to run against Senator Carr but it could take weeks to make a decision. Any other candidate also would be conditional on what preselection agreement is struck between the Left and Right factions.

Supporters of Senator Carr have warned of potential open warfare if the factions start targeting sitting MPs in both the federal and state parliaments.

Under a stability agreement being hammered out among faction leaders, a clause is being ­inserted to allow for so-called “renewal”, which is code for enabling sitting MPs to be blasted out of their seats.

Senator Carr, 65, has been in office for decades and is arguably the dominant Socialist Left figure for more than 30 years. But he has previously supported Bill Shorten’s leadership and has fallen out with Mr Albanese, making his tenure in the Senate less certain.

Left sources said one mooted candidate to contest Senator Carr was Ryan Batchelor, the son of former state minister and former ALP secretary Peter Batchelor.

Ryan Batchelor does not have the numbers to defeat Senator Carr, multiple sources said.

But nor does Senator Carr, who still negotiates on behalf of the Socialist Left, have the numbers to guarantee he remains in parliament, sources said.

This has opened the way for a majority of the Left unions to start searching for another potential candidate, although there is no obvious choice.

“There will be retribution for this,” a factional operator told The Australian. “Bornstein wasn’t the marquee player they thought he was. If they start trying to defeat sitting members they will have a massive fight. The Bornstein plan was farcical.”

While Senator Carr commands only limited union numbers, he is known as a formidable negotiator, with the capacity to engineer deals that might belie his numbers.

Another Left source opposed to Senator Carr said he had “run his race” and would not be supported to remain in parliament.

There were so many tweets sent by Mr Bornstein that party figures were alarmed at what else might turn up. The Weekend Australian revealed he started a Twitter pile-on in which some of his followers prematurely identified Christian Porter as the cabinet minister ­accused of the historical rape of a 16-year-old girl in 1988.

Mr Bornstein did not respond to The Australian.