Senior left faction players in Labor are agitated about what they see as a plan to undermine the frontbencher Mark Butler’s bid to be re-elected as ALP president, with backroom claims of “trickery”.
The controversy has been triggered by the late nomination of the trade union official Mich-Elle Myers, with some left figures claiming she is in the field, backed by the influential national secretary of the CFMEU, Michael O’Connor, to peel votes away from Butler.
“People are angry and frustrated by this trickery,” one senior left figure told Guardian Australia.
Another party official says Myers, a leftwinger, was nominated by a number of rightwingers in Tasmania, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory – which is unusual.
The looming ballot of party members is first past the post, not preferential, so the candidates are chasing every vote. Ballots will be distributed to party members on Friday.
Butler, the shadow minister for climate change, has put noses out of joint by campaigning assertively on a platform of democratising party processes.
He opened the political year on the offensive, delivering two significant speeches warning that Labor needed to do more to empower rank-and-file members and diminish the relative power of factional and union leaders, and said he was seeking a second term as president “to rally support for reform that would see our party become more democratic, substantially bigger and better organised”.
The frontbencher is facing off against the former Rudd and Gillard government treasurer Wayne Swan, a Queensland rightwinger.
The right faction’s candidate was initially expected to be the union official Tony Sheldon but Swan was prevailed upon by colleagues to run after Butler fired off his party reform sortie.
The right traditionally resists democratisation on the basis that it boosts the power of the left in party forums. Swan is expected to attract support from left-aligned party members because of his outspoken campaigning against inequality.
Swan, from the backbench, has pushed Labor to adopt a more assertively progressive and redistributive position on economic policy and tax, periodically tweaking the nose of his successor in the Treasury portfolio, Chris Bowen.
Butler is close to his fellow frontbencher Anthony Albanese, while the Labor leader Bill Shorten, a Victorian rightwinger, is close to O’Connor, who is an influential player both in the union movement and the federal party.
