How the party of love tore itself apart over preselection wrangle

Greens were torn over how to pick a candidate for Batman, which was waiting to be prised from Labor’s dead red hand.

Alex Bhathal. Picture: AAP

It was the summer of 2017 and the party of love was tearing itself apart.

In deepest, greenest Darebin, they were bitterly divided over how to preselect a candidate for Batman, a federal seat that, after more than 100 years, was waiting to be prised from Labor’s dead red hand.

The Greens’ head office and two most influential members, leader Richard Di Natale and Melbourne MP Adam Bandt, were pushing for a fast-track preselection to confirm the candidacy of Alex Bhathal.

The Darebin branch, the party’s largest local organisation in Australia, was less convinced.

Bhathal was dismayed. She didn’t understand how any Greens member could question her Batman bona fides. As a branch member would later relate in a 101-page formal complaint against Bhathal: “She said that, as a long-time member and woman of colour, she was entitled to be the candidate and the preselection should not be contested.’’

On Saturday, the voters of ­Batman appeared less concerned with skin than substance. At the final count, it wasn’t even close, with former ACTU president Ged Kearney holding the seat for Labor with more than 54 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote.

The recriminations now flowing make the preselection stoush seem like a Northcote Primary School tree planting. Greens HQ is vowing to hunt down those ­responsible for leaking the complaint against Bhathal to The Australian. Di Natale is threatening to expel saboteurs.

Di Natale’s anger is both understandable and misdirected.

When the complaint against Bhathal was lodged in January, it was done with the expectation that its contents would be treated seriously and in confidence. Instead, the concerns of 18 Greens members, including elected representatives, senior administrators and respected figures, were dismissed without proper examination.

Throughout the Batman campaign, Di Natale insisted the complaints against Bhathal had been carefully considered. He portrayed her detractors as a rump of party malcontents.

As The Australian revealed this month, the party’s state executive, instead of establishing a proper investigation into Bhathal, referred the complaint to a committee which had no investigative mandate and, according to the party’s own bylaws, was prohibited from making adverse findings of fact.

Greens voters are supposed to be highly educated and politically engaged. A Batman snow job was never going to fool the Darebin branch or a majority of voters in the nation’s most progressive electorate. Di Natale, having placed Bhathal’s candidacy above the party’s democratic principles and grievance procedures, has a significant, personal stake in this electoral disaster.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale, Alex Bhathal and Adam Bandt concede defeat in Batman on Saturday night.

To blame Bhathal’s internal party critics for the Batman loss is to ignore the party’s broader failings. Why was the Greens state ­office so intent on installing and then maintaining a five-time loser in the seat? Bhathal nearly won against David Feeney after his train wreck campaign in 2016 but Kearney is no faceless man.

Does the Greens’ philosophy of long-run campaigning conspire against attracting candidates who can’t afford to spend years out of full-time employment chasing a seat in parliament? Did the party really think it could bury a ­potentially devastating complaint against Bhathal until after the ­by-election?

The Batman preselection dispute came to a head in February last year, when the co-convener of the Darebin branch, James Murphy, confronted a state council meeting and complained about the attempt by head office to ram through Bhathal’s candidacy against the wishes of branch members. This triggered a civil war within the Darebin branch, with supporters of Bhathal accusing those resistant to fast-tracked preselection of disloyalty. Branch membership grew suspiciously. Meetings became volatile and unpleasant. The relationship between Bhathal and four Greens who serve on the Darebin local government council became toxic.

“Branch life suddenly became intense, heated and divided over the timing of preselection,’’ one member said. “It was difficult to make sense of the issues or ­intensity.’’

Another noted: “Despite advice from the federal MPs and the state party that early preselection was desirable for Batman, the branch remained unconvinced. Repeated attempts to get the branch to sign up to an early preselection time table failed to reach consensus.’’

Bhathal, Di Natale, Bandt and the state office eventually got their wish; the Preston social worker was the only candidate to stand in Batman and was formally endorsed on May 4 last year. The following month, Murphy quit the branch and his fellow Darebin co-convener Sahaya Khisty also quit her leadership role after what other branch members described as a campaign of harassment and intimidation from Bhathal supporters.

Accordingly to the complaint against Bhathal, victory unleashed vengeance. The nastiest episode was a preselection wrangle for the state seat of Preston late last year. The only candidate who stood was Susanne Newton, a Darebin city councillor. After Bhathal’s numbers were marshalled against her, she lost the vote to an empty chair.

It was the Preston fiasco that prompted the extensive complaint against Bhathal.