The Labor right factional powerbroker Don Farrell is in the box seat to replace Stephen Conroy as deputy Senate leader despite his history of tension with Labor’s current Senate leader, Penny Wong.
The ALP needs to appoint a new deputy Senate leader after Conroy announced abruptly last Friday he was quitting the Senate after a 20-year parliamentary career.
Farrell, who wields power in an influential bloc within the right and is personally close to the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, is expected to take the job in the leadership group – although it is not yet clear who will replace Conroy in the Senate.
The jockeying over a Senate replacement will be the first major test of any realignments in sub-groupings in the Victorian right after Conroy’s departure.
Conroy’s natural replacement as deputy Senate leader would have been Sam Dastyari, the New South Wales rightwing senator, but Dastyari quit the frontbench recently after a fundraising row.
Farrell has history with Wong. In 2012 he had to step aside from the top Senate spot on Labor’s ticket in South Australia in favour of Wong, who hails from the left faction in South Australia.
Farrell controversially secured the No 1 Senate position before a difficult election for the Labor – the election that saw Tony Abbott elected and Kevin Rudd defeated – despite the fact Wong was then the federal finance minister and Farrell was, from the public perspective, a not particularly high-profile parliamentary secretary.
He agreed to take the No 2 spot after key left figures, including Anthony Albanese, launched a vociferous protest about Wong’s treatment.
Farrell was defeated at the 2013 election, then made an effort to join the state parliament but was blocked by the South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, before returning to the federal arena in the 2016 election.
