Marlene Kairouz, Diana Asmar lose court battles against ALP

Two legal challenges against the ALP national executive’s intervention into Labor’s Victorian branch have failed.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and former consumer affairs minister Marlene Kairouz. Picture: AAP

Two legal challenges against the ALP national executive’s intervention into the Victorian branch of the Labor Party have failed.

Former Andrews government minister Marlene Kairouz sued the party in the Supreme Court, challenging the validity of the Daniel Andrews and Anthony Albanese-commissioned intervention, which took place in the wake of branch-stacking allegations against her faction — then led by former powerbroker Adem Somyurek.

In a separate case heard concurrently, a coalition of 10 Labor-affiliated unions, lead by Health Workers Union boss Diana Asmar, argued rank-and-file ALP members had been disenfranchised by a national takeover of the preselection process, which sees them denied a vote until 2023.

Supreme Court justice Timothy Ginnane found against both challenges on Tuesday afternoon.

Ms Kairouz’s case challenged the appointment of former premier Steve Bracks and former federal deputy Labor leader Jenny Macklin as party administrators, as well as disciplinary charges brought against her, alleging involvement in or knowledge of branch-stacking, currently being investigated by Victoria’s corruption watchdog IBAC.

Justice Ginnane said that it was not for his court to find whether the disciplinary charges brought against Ms Kairouz had substance, and noted that she denies them.

Ultimately, however, he found her case had not been proven.

“My conclusion is that Ms Kairouz has not proved or established her claim that the national executive has interfered with the administration of the branch trusts by passing and implementing the administration resolution,” Justice Ginnane said.

“I’ve decided that Ms Kairouz’s other grounds for challenging the national executive’s resolutions and the disciplinary charges are not justiciable, meaning that they are not claims with which the court will become involved or will decide, because they are internal disputes within a political party, which is an unincorporated association.”

The case brought by Ms Asmar and the 10 unions argued that a resolution of the national executive of the ALP, which took control over the preselection of candidates for safe federal ALP seats ahead of the next election, was invalid because it was not authorised by the ALP’s national constitution, or the Victorian branch rules.

The preselections involved the ALP national executive in June rubberstamping sitting MPs in 21 safe Labor seats to recontest the next election as candidates, as well as endorsing former Victorian ALP secretary Sam Rae — a factional ally of federal deputy leader Richard Marles — for the new seat of Hawke on Melbourne’s northwestern outskirts.

“My conclusion is that the plaintiffs have not proved or established their claim that the national executive has interfered unlawfully with the administration of the branch trusts by passing and implementing the administration resolution,” Justice Ginnane found.

He also found that the Victorian branch was not a separate legal entity to the national ALP, “but as the word branch, which is part of its name indicates, it is part of the ALP.

“Thus the powers contained in the national constitution, and exercisable by the national executive, apply to all branches and members of the ALP,” Justice Ginnane said.

The decision will further cement a “stability deal” agreed upon in April between the majority of Left and Right ALP factions, which excluded key unions and factional allies of former federal leader Bill Shorten, Mr Somyurek and Left powerbroker Kim Carr.

One member of the non-Somyurek Right told The Australian: “This decision shows the Victorian branch is no longer controlled by the people who brought on this legal action. It’s in safer hands now. This is the final nail in Bill Shorten‘s leadership coffin.”

ALP veteran and Somyurek ally Garth Head decried the decision, saying it “denies members of political parties any rights, even when a cabal of faction bosses act against their party rules and deliver power to themselves.”