Shorten's hopes for smooth Labor conference dashed by strong showing by left
The Labor right faction’s effort to secure a majority in its own right at the party’s national conference, which would help Bill Shorten navigate politically fraught debates, has been dealt a blow by a strong turnout for the left in Queensland.
With the Queensland delegation for the national conference now settled, the left faction will field 193 conference delegates in December and the right 195 delegates, with Queensland’s “old guard” group numbering five, with seven independents forming a conference crossbench.
While the right faction has finished nominally ahead because of concerted organisational efforts in Victoria and New South Wales, the old guard, which used to be a rightaligned group, now caucuses with the left in Queensland. Nationally, the group of five delegates is regarded as a swing vote.
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The practical consequence of the national result is the December conference numbers are too tight for any one faction to claim a clear working majority, and the outlook is further complicated by wars between sub-factional groupings.
The current outlook is a repeat of the conference dynamic in 2015, when Shorten had to rely on cooperation from a substantial delegation from the left-aligned CFMEU to head off politically sensitive forays on asylum seeker policy and other flash points.
Given one of the prominent members of Labor’s industrial left faction, Ged Kearney, is leading the public push to prevent mandatory offshore detention becoming indefinite detention because of the lack of viable resettlement options, any left split during the looming conference debate will be internally contentious.
One left source told Guardian Australia: “If the left votes together, no one has a majority. It is a very fine balance, which obviously has led to a lot of concern from the left about what the CFMEU will do.”
“There is a worry we will see a repeat of what happened last time in critical votes, particularly on asylum seekers, and the CFMEU will vote with the right.”
The current concern around the left doesn’t stop with the ultimate resolution of asylum debate.
“To the CFMEU, we would say, if they expect the rest of the left to vote on the issues that matter to them – then it would be helpful if they maintained solidarity on issues that are of concern to other left delegates.”