The Labor left frontbencher Mark Butler says he will run to be ALP president for a second term to push a democratisation agenda before the party’s mid-year national conference – a push that is infuriating the right faction.
Butler has gone on the offensive at the opening of the political year, delivering two significant speeches over recent weeks warning that Labor needs to do more to empower rank and file members and diminish the relative power of factional and union leaders.
On Friday, Butler said he nominated to be party president in 2015 “to rally support for reform that would see our party become more democratic, substantially bigger and better organised”.
He said that despite repeated calls by many for the ALP to democratise and allow party members a vote in processes such as the selection of Senate candidates, “not enough reform has happened since then”.
“Still, too many important decisions are taken by a few factional power brokers, rather than by our many members,” he said on Friday.
In nominating again, he made it clear he intended to campaign for party reform between now and the July national conference “and do all I can to build pressure for real change”.
He said he had been “heartened by the level of support for those changes expressed by party members”.
Butler’s public incursions since the start of the year have triggered a pushback from the right faction, and party sources suggest Wayne Swan, the former Rudd and Gillard government treasurer and prominent rightwinger, could be drafted to run for party president.
Left candidates tend to win open ballots in the ALP but the internal thinking behind drafting Swan is that he could appeal to left-leaning ALP members because he has been outspoken in the party’s debate about inequality.
Swan has been lukewarm about putting his hand up. The right’s candidate is expected to be the trade union official Tony Sheldon.
As well as countenancing a run by Swan, there are also reports that officials could seek a rule change banning frontbenchers from contesting the party’s presidency – an apparent response to Butler’s calls for democratisation.
The democratic reform debate at Labor’s last national conference achieved next to no progress.
Historically, within Labor culture, rightwingers resist proposals for democratisation because such moves could boost the internal power of the left in party forums.
