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The Age
March 5,
2003
Summary: Australian Labor
Party leader Greg Sword comes down on the practice of
’Äòbranch-stacking’Äô (insincerely stuffing local party branches with
members in order to gain control of them). The Australian Workers
Unions has made a proposal for full representation (proportional
representation) to be used for candidate selection within the Labor
party.
The Age
Sword alleges
ALP branch-stacking
March 5, 2003
By Ewin Hannan ALP national
president Greg Sword yesterday declared one-third of Victorian
Labor's 12,000-strong membership to be "branch-stacked", calling for
new penalties to be imposed on MPs and party members found guilty of
the practice. Mr Sword told The Age up to 70 per cent of branch
members paid an annual $29 membership fee - a concessional rate that
"assisted those who are involved in branch-stacking activity".
"There is a deep suspicion in the party that the majority of those
(concessional members) are stacked," he said. "We say there is a
serious problem that the party needs to deal with." Mr Sword,
general secretary of the National Union of Workers, called on the
state ALP to support rule changes beyond the reforms adopted at
Labor's national conference last year. He said party members found
branch-stacking should be expelled or suspended from the party. MPs
found guilty of branch-stacking could also lose party endorsement
for five years, meaning they would not be able to stand as an ALP
candidate for at least one election. The proposals are due to be
considered at the party's state conference in May. In its formal
submission to the conference, Mr Sword's union urges putting
responsibility on party officials to act when they became aware of
such practices. It says they should be subject to a new code of
conduct, overseen by a party obudsman. It calls for state
conferences to be annual, instead of twice a year, with delegate
numbers up by 350 to 800, and it says the party should consider
having 400 conference delegates electedm directly by local branches,
rather than federal electoral assemblies. Mr Sword said the state
branch should consider eventually "opening the conference to all
members of the party when it comes to policy decisions". The push
by Mr Sword comes as a factional brawl within the state branch
intensified yesterday, with right-wing ALP figures accusing him of
overturning longstanding power-sharing arrangements between
factions. Mr Sword pulled his union out of the right-wing Labor
Unity group last year and has teamed with the Socialist Left and
other smaller groupings to seize control of the state branch. The
alliance incensed Labor Unity by using its numbers last week to
claim four of five positions at the party's state headquarters.
Senator Stephen Conroy, a leading Labor Unity figure, accused Mr
Sword and the Left's Senator Kim Carr of destabilising the branch by
turning their back on the past practice of power-sharing between the
factions. The Australian Workers Union, a leading Labor
Unity-aligned union, has proposed rule changes for the party
conference, such as "reinstatement of proportional representation at
every level of the party". |
