Labor’s Victorian Senate selections unopposed

Amid factional control of the Victorian ALP, the three women vying to replace Kimberley Kitching, Kim Carr and Anthony Byrne in parliament have been nominated unopposed.

Jana Stewart. Picture: Facebook

Two union officials and a senior Andrews government bureaucrat will be preselected as Labor’s candidates to fill the vacancies created by the death of Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching and resignations of senator Kim Carr and MP Anthony Byrne.

The unopposed nominations of Linda White, Cassandra Fernando and Jana Stewart mean the contests will not go to a ballot of Labor’s national executive, which was otherwise due to finalise candidates on Tuesday.

Instead, the party will vote to determine the order of the full Senate ticket.

Victorian ALP members have not had a say in preselections since June 2020, when Premier Daniel Andrews handed control of the state branch to the national executive in the wake of branch-stacking allegations centred on the faction controlled by then Labor powerbroker Adem Somyurek and his ally-turned-enemy Mr Byrne.

As foreshadowed by The Australian, 62-year-old former Australian Services Union assistant national secretary Ms White on Monday nominated to replace Senator Carr, 66.

The former convener of the Socialist Left faction of the Victorian ALP on Sunday announced he would quit politics at the next election, citing his health but in the knowledge that factional deals being finalised at the weekend would precipitate the end of his 29-year career.

Like the death of Kitching, his departure from politics comes as a blow to former opposition leader Bill Shorten, and cements the factional realignment set in train by the purging of Mr Somyurek and his allies, strengthening the power bases of Mr Andrews, federal leader Anthony Albanese and his deputy leader, Richard Marles.

Indigenous woman Ms Stewart was until recently a deputy secretary of the Victorian Department of Justice, playing a leading role in work on Stolen Generations reparations.

She has secured the support of key factions on the Right, including those aligned with the TWU and SDA, again highlighting their ascendancy at the ­expense of the Shorten-aligned AWU, and the CEPU and HWU.

Ms Fernando, who has been preselected to run in Mr Byrne’s outer southeastern Melbourne seat of Holt, is a former SDA ­organiser.