An internal battle has erupted ahead of the Labor party national conference over a push by Bill Shorten’s right faction to secure three extra votes – theoretically, a working majority – courtesy of the Young Labor delegation.
With the July conference emerging as the tightest numbers game in recent memory, the right faction has made it known that it wants Young Labor’s three-person delegation to be comprised of three rightwing delegates.
This representation is consistent with the current makeup of the youth wing’s executive body. The right faction dominates Young Labor and the group’s executive body. The right faction controls 16 of 21 positions, giving it the whip hand in this transaction.
Tensions between the factions saw Young Labor left delegates effectively abandon their last national conference in May 2014 because of internal rancour. The left contested ballots at the joint event, but subsequently held their own conference.
Young Labor was supposed to hold a joint conference this year to select its delegation for the party’s July national conference but the gathering did not occur by the appointed time.
Young Labor then applied to the ALP national executive to allow their own right-dominated national executive to appoint the delegates for July and that power was duly delegated to the youth wing.
Guardian Australia has been told the right numbers push is being led by the NSW state secretary, Jamie Clements, but other right sources dispute this, characterising his current involvement as suing for peace.
The right believes it is entitled to the spots. But the left is resisting the push. The left argument is Labor’s youth wing is operating outside the rules by failing to hold their conference and select their delegates by the usual process.
The left is pushing for the youth delegation to be comprised of two rightwingers and one leftwinger.
Number crunchers have been working on a back-of-the-envelope calculation for July which would see 196 leftwing delegates, 197 rightwing delegates, and four unaligned delegates on the floor at the national conference.
Those numbers rely on the Young Labor delegation being comprised of two rightwing delegates and one leftwing delegate.
If the right prevails in the current tussle and gains all three youth spots, the conference numbers would tilt right. The right would hold 198 votes, the left 195 votes, and there would be four nonaligned delegates.
On paper that improvement would help the right faction back Shorten’s preferred position in contentious policy and procedural debates, including the all-important rules debate, which requires a statutory majority of 199 votes.
Given the right has effectively lost control of the July conference for the first time in 20 years, every vote counts in practical management terms.
The internal battle for votes is more micro for this conference than at any gathering in recent memory.
But in taking on the numbers fight in winner-takes-all mode, Labor’s right faction could end up pushing the four nonaligned conference delegates into the left camp.
If the four nonaligned swing the left’s way in critical votes, the left faction would achieve a working majority in July.
The final makeup of the young Labor delegation doesn’t need to be settled until conference eve, when delegates are credentialed for the event.
