A candidate vying to replace the Labor MP Michael Danby has blasted Danby’s decision to call a factional meeting to anoint a successor, warning it has “no resemblance to a democratic process”.
Councillor Mary Delahunty has warned the meeting, scheduled for Thursday, will allow a “select group” of Danby’s supporters to pick his replacement without a full local preselection.
The meeting will come ahead of a national executive meeting on Friday that is expected to confirm federal intervention to select candidates in vacant Victorian seats.
Candidates are needed to replace Danby in Melbourne Ports, Jenny Macklin in Jagajaga, and fill the new seat of Fraser in Melbourne’s west, and Bill Shorten’s seat of Maribyrnong if he jumps to the new seat.
The Victorian preselections have become a flashpoint of factional conflict. The emerging grouping of rightwing powerbroker Adem Somyurek has sought local preselection ballots while the adherents of the stability pact negotiated between the right’s Steven Conroy and the veteran leftwinger Kim Carr’s socialist left faction favour federal intervention.
Last Tuesday Bill Shorten issued a public warning to factional powerbrokers against targeting sitting MPs in his home state, interpreted as a sign confirming that he will push for the national executive to step in.
Late last week Danby, who has announced his retirement at the next election, wrote to a group of about 90 Labor members in the electorate of Melbourne Ports to invite them to a forum at the Elsternwick RSL to hear from the three candidates vying for the seat, renamed MacNamara.
Delahunty, former Danby staffer Josh Burns and Nick Dyrenfurth, the executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre, have thrown their hats in the ring to gain Labor preselection for MacNamara. While Dyrenfurth is considered Danby’s candidate of choice, all three are members of the Labor right (the Unity faction).
Danby wrote that attendees should come with “a clear view to indicating your preference for a candidate as we intend to decide who our preferred Labor Unity candidate might be.”
“I intend to advise beforehand one of the known candidates that I will be supporting,” he said.
But concerns were raised that in an electorate with 500 Labor members, not even all members of the Labor right faction were invited to attend.
Neil Pharaoh, the Labor candidate for the state seat of Prahran, told Guardian Australia he had been a member of Labor Unity who had lived in the MacNamara/Melbourne Ports electorate for over six years and had not been invited.
Delahunty said she would participate in the forum but that did not indicate she accepts the validity of the process.
“This is an indication of nothing more than what a select group of people think,” she told Guardian Australia. “This bears no resemblance to a democratic process.”
Delahunty said she has asked Danby “how this can possibly fit within the rules”. “I can’t see that a select group of people getting to determine the next candidate [does].”
Danby said “of course” he still supports a full vote of members and claimed he had convened the “large local Labor Unity” meeting to pass a resolution calling on the national executive to allow a full preselection.
“I have been encouraged to hold the meeting by various stakeholders,” he told Guardian Australia. “The meeting to which you refer is only indicative of that [Labor Unity] group’s view.”
Danby said that the incomplete invite list may be the result of “names left off by a computer-generated list [such as partners]” and was “no conspiracy”.
Dryenfurth said he will “abide by whatever processes the party has in place”.
“I have lived in the electorate almost all of my life, and as a local member I’m looking forward to a full ballot of local members as part of the preselection process,” he said.
“I am a member of the Unity wing of the Labor party and look forward to sharing my views at party forums as no doubt all the candidates are.”
