National president backs push for membership to elect Labor leaders

ALP president Jenny McAllister has supported party members electing parliamentary leaders, rather than MPs.

ALP president Jenny McAllister has supported party members electing parliamentary leaders, rather than MPs, and will back Tasmanian Labor's push to change the party's national rules.

As the Tasmanian Labor conference voted on the weekend to remove the power of MPs to elect the state leader and open up voting to party and union members, Premier Lara Giddings refused to endorse the change at the conference, despite widespread support.

This radical reform of the party's leadership election process has won support from the NSW Labor secretary, Sam Dastyari, who told The Australian he would support a national rule change.

National secretary George Wright has called for debate at

the party's next national conference, which is due in 2014.

Ms McAllister told The Australian that direct election of the leader had the potential to reconnect Labor to its supporters.

"It's exciting that the Tasmanian branch wants to try it," she said.

In her address to the conference, Ms McAllister supported a national rule change to allow the states to adopt it if they wished.

"It's a model that we know works well in our sister parties overseas, many of whom involve their members in the most important decision that a movement can take," she told the conference.

On Saturday, Tasmanian Labor voted overwhelmingly to adopt a broad electoral college for

leadership elections, comprising about 1000 party members, 25,000 affiliated union members and MPs, each grouping making up one-third of the voting pool of equal weighting.

As flagged in The Australian last week, this model, which will initially apply in opposition, can take effect only if the party's National Principles of Organisation, which stipulate that MPs elect party leaders, are amended.

A change to these rules at the next national conference has support from Mr Dastyari, who is also a national executive member.

"My personal view has always been that states should be able to administer themselves.

"It should not be the role of the national party to tell rank-and-file members in other states how to run their branches," he said.

Ms Giddings failed to support the idea, which was backed by her own Left faction.

The motion was carried on the voices while the Premier was not in the room.

Ms Giddings had said ahead of the conference: "I am happy to explore all proposals that could help to improve engagement with grassroots members."