ALP National Executive and non-aligned reps talk preselections. James Button and Kath Cozens provide an Open Labor perspective on the meeting. The Victorian intervention is not over.
26 July 2021: The four Victorian non-aligned representatives met two National Executive (NE) representatives to lodge a protest against the suspension of all votes for ordinary members in preselections until 2023, and to hear the NE’s response.
NE members agreed to meet us after a meeting of 156 members on Monday July 19 2021 hosted by Open Labor, the Independents and some members of the Melbourne federal electorate. Our meeting overwhelmingly supported a motion calling on the NE to restore members’ voting rights immediately.
Non-aligned members who attended the meeting were Kath Cozens and James Button of Open Labor, and Janet McCalman and Eric Dearricott of the Independents.
We met NE members Linda White (Assistant National ASU Secretary and chair of the Chifley Research Centre) and Susie Byers (President of Victorian Labor & CPSU regional director), and with National Secretary Paul Erickson (a non-voting member of NE).
Both Susie and Linda are also on the five-person Interim Governance Committee set up to run the Victorian party after the Administrators concluded their investigation into branch stacking.
All three said that any significant decisions about the future of the intervention into the Victorian branch, including arrangements for preselections, would have to wait at least until the judgment in two related Supreme Court cases challenging the validity of aspects of the party’s intervention into the Victorian branch.
But more substantively, all three NE members told us they disagreed with our motion calling for the restoration of voting rights to party members.
They argued that such a move would imperil the reforms underway to clean up the party roll and strengthen its administration. Restoring voting rights too soon, they said, would allow branch stackers to resume where they left off.
Paul Erickson said that his comments were not a personal perspective but were based on the arguments that legal counsel for the NE had made in the two Supreme Court cases.
He noted that the NE had intervened in response to requests from party leaders Dan Andrews and Anthony Albanese.
The Victorian intervention is not over
Although Victorian Administrators Jenny Macklin and Steve Bracks had removed 1800 alleged branch stackers from the party rolls (of a total membership of 16,000), and another 2400 members did not renew once the investigation began, Paul said that ‘the intervention is not over.‘
The party needed “multiple renewal cycles with the new rolls” to exhaust the capacity of branch stackers to keep funding old memberships and fund new ones.
Paul said that existing party committees – including the Public Office Selection Committee (POSC), which chooses MPs – were ‘entirely disfigured’ by the stacking that had occurred.
Susie Byers said: ‘We cannot let people wait it out and resume business as usual. We need to make it expensive to maintain stackers on the rolls for a couple of years.‘
The party also needed time to introduce the reforms, set out in the Administrators report of November 2020, to stop future branch stacking.
These reforms include introducing membership payments by traceable means – now completed but ‘a significant logistical undertaking,’ Linda White said – and renewals by direct debit from members’ bank accounts, still pending as the party introduces a new IT membership data base.
Introduction of rolling renewals rather than renewals on fixed days, a reform designed to prevent stackers from doing bulk renewals, also required time, as did changing the branch structure to one branch per state electorate.
Linda White said that having not sat on the Victorian Administrative Committee for 20 years: ‘I was appalled at the governance in the branch. I can’t believe the way the show ran – it’s a disgrace. It’s going to take a long time to turn the ship around but we are working assiduously to do that.‘
Linda and Susie agreed that the party needed to do more to explain to members how it was cleaning up its act, but said that the court case, among other challenges, had made communications difficult.
In response to comments by the NE members, the non-aligned speakers said that ordinary members believed they had been excluded not only from preselections but from all party processes and decision making.
Eric Dearricott proposed that if a clean election for the POSC was not possible at present, as an alternative the NE could exercise the central 50 percent share of votes for preselections, with the other half going to ordinary members. That would at least give them a chance to have a say in choosing their candidates, and for the NE to know members’ preferences.
Eric said that although it was probably too late to have a local component of the vote for the remaining federal preselections, no such impediment existed for state preselections, given that the Victorian Electoral Commission would not even finalise electorate boundaries until next month.
Paul responded that he could see no scenario in which the NE went against the course set by party leaders, Daniel Andrews in particular.
We left the meeting feeling that the three NE members had spoken with sincerity. Linda White, in particular, spoke with conviction about the hard work being done to clean up the roll and fix the party’s abysmal administration processes. We can only wish the Interim Governance Committee well in that effort.
Outstanding questions for the party leadership
However, critical questions remain unanswered. The Administrators set a goal for rebuilding the Victorian Labor party membership to 20,000. How will that be achieved – is there a plan? How will ordinary members be involved in it?
What role does the Stability Pact have now in party operations and will members be told about it? Do factional leaders recognise that a thriving party that appeals to the widest range of Labor supporters; a party that encourages them to join can only occur when the doors of the party are thrown open and a substantial role for the many members who are not part of the factions and sub-factions is found?
Even if the NE maintains its position that members will not be given a say in preselections before 2023 – a matter on which we have not conceded – there is a whole range of party-building activities that can be started now.
We look forward to more conversations with party leaders and within the larger membership about how we can survive and thrive as a party.
Other stories
Stop the shadowy preselections: 150 people call for change – Open Labor, 21 July 2021
The preselection battle for Hawke – Open Labor, 19 June 2021
Macklin-Bracks: reform recommendations & the Victorian ALP – first response from Eric Dearricott – 29 Nov 2020
Organised factions must be outlawed – by Dennis Glover, Oct 2020
Stability Pact sticking points threaten between VIC Labor – by Rob Harris, The Age, 21 May 2021
Final report from the Administrators Macklin & Bracks 2020-21
VIC ALP members preselection ballots from 1993 onwards? – Open Labor, Aug 2021
Supreme Court dismisses challenges by unions, MP, in the wake of ALP branch stacking scandal – by Richard Willingham, ABC News, 19 Oct 2021
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