The Labor party is moving to a process where ballots would be conducted by the electoral commission after an internal dispute about the conduct of the 2013 leadership vote that installed Bill Shorten as federal leader.
Claims have been circulating for months that rorting may have occurred in New South Wales during the leadership ballot, and on Friday, Labor’s state administrative committee agreed to new transparency measures, including exploring whether the electoral commission could administer future party ballots to put them at arm’s length.
Senior figures from the left faction in NSW have been pursuing alleged “ballot harvesting” by members of the NSW right in an effort to boost the fortunes of the right faction candidate, Shorten.
But the NSW organisation moved on Friday to shut down the fight, agreeing to give the left faction equal access to the NSW branch membership system – and agreeing to new procedures regarding the management of changes of addresses for party members.
The dispute was triggered by alleged conduct in Auburn.
In February, Auburn councillor Hicham Zraika was suspended from the Labor party for six months when allegations surfaced about unusual changes to postal addresses of members in his local branch.
Some Labor sources allege what happened in Auburn was just the tip of the iceberg, that rorting occurred on a scale in NSW that could have influenced the end result, and senior party figures are now aware of the scale of the alleged conduct – but thus far no one has produced any concrete evidence to substantiate the claims.
Jamie Clements, the general secretary of NSW Labor, said in a statement issued on Friday that 73 of 124 changes to postal addresses of NSW branch members in the run-up to the leadership ballot occurred in Auburn.
Clements described this as “a serious matter.”
But in what appears to be a carefully worded statement, Clements concludes that “nothing was disclosed” during an internal review tribunal process “which would suggest that the election of Mr Shorten as leader of the Labor party was flawed; or that there was any prospect that any further enquiry would produce any such suggestion”.
The 2013 federal leadership vote included party members for the first time in Labor history.
Shorten prevailed in the ballot against the NSW left candidate, Anthony Albanese.
Albanese won comprehensively the vote of the ALP grass roots membership, 59.92% to Shorten’s 40.08% – but Shorten secured a caucus vote of 63.95%. The victory in caucus gave the rightwinger the leadership.
One of the left figures who brought the complaint to the NSW administrative committee, Tim Ayres, the state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, told Guardian Australia he was satisfied with the new transparency procedures that would be overseen by the independent directors of the administrative committee.
“People can now have real confidence in the outcome of the leadership ballot,” Ayres said on Friday.
Before the deliberations in Sydney on Friday, Shorten said there was no tolerance for rule breaking but the allegations had now been investigated.
“I’ve got zero tolerance for people who want to break the rules of the party and play any of those sort of games,” Shorten told the ABC.
“But the point is there has been an investigation, the NSW branch of the Labor party who’s responsible for the administration have said that they’ve investigated the matter.”
