At least 1,700 people in Victoria have had their Labor memberships revoked and strict new registration requirements will be imposed as part of a root-and-branch restructure to prevent branch-stacking.
On Friday, Labor’s national executive received the review into the troubled Victorian branch by party elders Steve Bracks and Jenny Macklin and endorsed its 37 recommendations to improve the integrity of party membership.
The report will continue the suspension of the Victorian branch’s independence through 2021 – including the period of preselections for the next federal election – and will result in a second review of membership in 2022.
In June, the party’s executive appointed Bracks and Macklin as administrators of the branch and suspended all state committees, as the party grappled with the damaging fallout of the Adem Somyurek branch-stacking scandal.
The review, seen by Guardian Australia, sets out that from January 2021 a four-person interim governance committee will run the Victorian branch with an executive officer appointed by the national executive ensuring the recommendations are implemented.
The Victorian branch won’t regain full independence until at least 2022, when new members of the administration committee will be elected.
In January, a new party monitor will also be appointed, to consider complaints against members and conduct a second review of the integrity of party membership in 2022.
The rule changes erect barriers to prevent people whose membership was revoked or resigned during the administration period from regaining influence over the party.
Those members will be unable to rejoin until 2024 and may only be permitted to do so after a two-thirds vote of the administrative committee.
Bracks and Macklin revoked 1,360 memberships of people who had purported to join the party but failed to complete a questionnaire to say they had signed their own form. A further 350 were removed when they failed to provide full contact information.
The true scale of the purge is believed be much larger, with several thousand memberships not renewed during the period of the administration.
The extraordinary federal intervention in the state branch was triggered by a Nine Network report that Somyurek, a rightwing powerbroker, orchestrated the payment of party memberships, an allegation he contests.
Somyurek later resigned his membership of the Victorian ALP. The disgraced powerbroker resigned before he could be expelled by the party’s national executive, and he was sacked from the state ministry by the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews.
The report states that two members who were named in the 60 Minutes investigation resigned after they were contacted and another had their membership revoked. A fourth not featured in the program had their membership revoked for suspected breaches of party rules.
“In order to meet our members’ expectations, we will continue to investigate those who may have stacked branches, breached the party rules, or otherwise damaged the Labor brand,” the report said.
“Those who caused such profound pain and shame to our party must, and will, be held to account.”
To prevent local powerbrokers exercising a gatekeeping role of who can join the party, the Victorian branch will centralise membership processes in the state office. Members will be required to pay for their memberships personally through traceable methods such as direct debits or cheques.
New members must attend a branch meeting within 12 months and will gain voting rights after 24 months. Only 20 new members per branch per month will be allowed to attain voting rights.
Subject to limited exceptions for regional towns and large branches, local branches will be replaced with a single branch per Victorian electoral district. The central branch will be abolished.
Macklin said the party had taken branch-stacking “very seriously”. Bracks said that the changes would “result in real and enduring change in the culture and operations of the Victorian Labor party”.
Andrew Giles, the shadow multicultural affairs minister and a senior Victorian left faction leader, told Guardian Australia the report “makes confronting reading for anyone who cares about the Labor party”.
“Its recommendations and the work of [Bracks and Macklin] are things for which Labor supporters should be grateful: they provide the basis to return our party to the true believers, and to refocus on our values and mission,” he said.
Giles said the report showed Andrews and the federal Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, were “undoubtedly right” to intervene in the branch.
