Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

of these three sitting frontbenchers who are being challenged for preselection by three more union officials. The reality is that the power basis of these three challengers is entirely predicated upon branch stacking, union links, slush funds and sleazy deals between them, which freeze out ordinary members of the Australian Labor Party.

We had confirmation of this this morning when the member for Maribyrnong said on radio 3AW in Melbourne that it was almost impossible for him to win preselection, thanks to a series of what he calls ‘sleazy internal deals’—confirmation from the member for Maribyrnong. We have had luminaries of the Labor Party speak out about this: people like John Cain, a former Premier of Victoria; Barry Jones, a former minister in a Labor government and a former president of the ALP; and, of course, John Button, a very distinguished former senator for the ALP. Mr Button said this recently:

... Simon Crean when he was leader took the step of trying to implement a very small number of the recommendations which were advocated by Bob Hawke and Neville Wran in their proposals to reform and make more democratic the Labor Party in Australia. He took that step.

But John Button went on to say:

Now, that doesn’t suit certain people because they’re not interested in democratic parties. They’re more interested in manipulating positions of power and branch stacking and things like that, which produce that power.

We saw this in a report in the Weekend Australian newspaper on 26 November last year, which reported on the fact that Bill Shorten and Martin Pakula had met ‘in a secret location in northern Melbourne’. The report went on to say:

A swag of state seats as well as seven federal lower house seats and two positions on the Senate ticket were bought and sold that day.

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