Marles ready to clean up after Albo
CORIO MP Richard Marles might be best known to Australians as Peter Dutton’s affable sparring partner on Channel 9’s Today show.
But in Canberra, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s deputy is increasingly seen as a man with his eyes on the main prize.
If, as more and more Labor folk fear, Mr Albanese is headed to defeat at the next election, Mr Marles has done everything to position himself as his replacement.
“He presents as a safe pair of hands,” said a Labor frontbencher.
Last month, his ambitions received a boost when his allies secured a factional deal that gave Mr Marles control of the Labor Party in Victoria.
That deal, and his hopes of succeeding Mr Albanese, could hinge on a case to be heard in the Supreme Court of Victoria this month.
The most astonishing thing about Mr Marles’ career is how long it has taken even people who obsess about federal politics to see him as a contender.
“People have had a hard time getting their heads around the scale of Richard’s ambition,” a former senior Labor official said.
A government minister said: “It’s only begun to dawn on us how ruthless he is.”
Plenty of senior Labor figures agree.
“He’s a lot more ambitious and lot more ruthless than Bill (Shorten),” one said.
The underestimation is in part explained by the cultivated air of diffidence that comes naturally to those lucky enough to have been educated at Geelong Grammar.
To really understand why it has taken so long for people to cotton on to how far Mr Marles wants to go, you have to understand recent history of the Right faction of Victoria’s ALP — and understand Richard Marles’ relationship with Mr Shorten.
Although the pair were elected at the same time as part of the 2007 Ruddslide, the Beaconsfield mining disaster made Mr Shorten known nationally, whereas Mr Marles arrived in Canberra as a backbencher.
Despite coming from different tribes, the pair share a lot in common. Although Mr Shorten went to the elite Xavier College, his schoolteacher mother struggled to pay the fees. Likewise, while Mr Marles attended Geelong Grammar, he wasn’t born into the upper class — his father was a teacher at the school.
That the pair would end up rivals wasn’t clear when they were elected in 2007.
In the Victorian Right, Mr Shorten was streets ahead of Mr Marles. If he was the faction’s lead singer, Mr Marles was the bass player at best.
After Kevin Rudd was swept from office in September 2013, Mr Shorten was the clear favourite to succeed him as
leader with the backing of the national Right.
Despite losing the vote of the membership for leader, Mr Shorten prevailed over the Left’s Anthony Albanese with the help of elements of the Victorian Socialist Left close to Senator Kim Carr.
Within a short time, it was clear his mate from Geelong was cosying up to the recently beaten loser.
Playing a long game, Mr Marles had worked out that if Mr Shorten’s leadership flopped, Albo from NSW would be unstoppable as his replacement — and he would need a deputy, from the Right and preferably a Victorian.
After the 2019 election disaster for Labor, Mr Marles was ready to make his move. The only impediment was elements of the Victorian caucus Right.
Pre-eminent power in Victorian Labor in 2019 was not in the federal caucus but state upper house member Adem Somyurek.
Mr Somyurek had a score to settle with Mr Marles, dating to an attempted political assassination a few years earlier in which he had been accused by a fellow Turkish-speaking MP and ally of Mr Marles of threatening him with a bread knife in the parliamentary dining room.
Despite advice from friends and allies that he should bury the hatchet with Mr Marles, those familiar with the period say Mr Somyurek did his best to stop Mr Marles being elected deputy with the support of his home state and faction.
As he sits on the crossbenches of the Victorian Legislative Council today — sacked as a minister and expelled from the ALP for life — Mr Somyurek has time to reflect on what happens to people who cross Richard Marles.
For in 2020, Mr Marles’ close ally in Canberra, Anthony Byrne, executed a spectacular sting against the powerbroker when his electorate office was rigged for cameras placed there by 60 Minutes.
Within hours of these recordings going to air, Mr Somyurek and the entire Victorian branch of the ALP had been suspended.
Observers say that while Mr Marles still gets on well with Mr Albanese, he has struggled with the decision-making processes.
“I think it’s fair to say he’s been frustrated,” a source said.
The question is whether Mr Marles is prepared to let that frustration show in public.
While the look on his face as he sat behind Mr Albanese listening to his underwhelming budget reply speech this week suggests this mightn’t be far away, for now Mr Marles is being the good soldier.
Meanwhile, there’s that courthouse to be got through when a bevy of Labor unions will argue a recently signed factional deal that will cement Mr Marles’ allies’ control of the Victorian branch should be thrown out as it disenfranchises them and their members.
That case is likely to be heard alongside another brought by state MP and Somyurek ally Marlene Kairouz seeking to overturn the 2020 intervention.
Mr Marles declined to be interviewed. His office said his focus was getting Mr Albanese elected.