Labor

RIGHT SPITE: The once great NSW Labor Right aint what it used to be

The once great NSW branch of the ALP is in all sorts of trouble. The polls show that even the soft left Liberal former fattie Barry O’Farrell – who makes his southern equivalent Ted Baillieu look good – is going to romp in when disappointed voters get their chance to wield the baseball bat of justice next year.

With morale boosted by a presentable and dynamic new Premier in Kristina Keneally after a disastrous experiment with a Left faction operative, the NSW Labor brand is still reeling a round of self-indulgent misconduct of the kind once infamous engaged in by the Victorian branch.

WE PROBE NORTH
VEXNEWS has conducted an investigation into the mess, which started with the thrill-killing of popular and reform-minded Premier Morris Iemma and descended into the Labor Right being so divided they preferred to put in a former chief of staff to convicted pedophile Milton Orkopolous – in the form of Nathan Rees – than one of their own.

Many fingers of blame in Sydney for the predicament the state government and party has been in are pointing at the party President and ETU chieftain Bernie Riordan, described on his own website as a “know-it-all” and described variously by foes as a bully, a thug, dinosaur, troglodyte and rock-ape. In the colourful world of the ALP, not all of these descriptions are meant pejoratively. Also blamed is Senator Mark Arbib, but we’ll come back to him in a minute.

Some in the NSW Right are hoping that wily young incoming general secretary Sam Dastiyari will fulfill his destiny as the Graham Richardson of his generation by engineering the demise of the meddling and overbearing Party boss Bernie Riordan whose mindless opposition to Morris Iemma and Michael Costa’s electricity privatisation proposals did much to make Labor appear dysfunctional and ideological in the state where – at their best – they can be the most connected of all state branches with the voters who elect them.

The absurdity of Riordan’s position is that the newly elected NSW Liberal government will almost certainly privatise electricity and there’ll be nothing Riordan can do about it.

For the dubious benefit of a few years more of public ownership of the industry where he has many union members, he publicly confronted and destroyed a successful Labor moderate Premier, risking permanent damage to the reputation of the party he claims to love. Crazy stuff that reached its most shameful point, insiders say, when Premier Iemma was humilated on the stage of a NSW ALP conference on the issue.

“It would have done your (Victorian) lunatic Bill Hartley proud,” a disgusted observer told VEXNEWS.

Dastiyari understandably keeps his cards close to his chest on issues as delicate as the need to knee-cap Riordan, hoping to build his own base before attempting to invade Bernie’s Berlin.

For decades the NSW branch had been the model of modern Labor, now they are a cautionary tale. A tale that we understood will soon be chronicled in an explosive tell-all book by the Daily Telegraph’s Simon Benson, who has just recently made the move to the Canberra Press Gallery from NSW state rounds ahead of the release of his stink-bomb book that will be probably be the best-selling political insider’s account in years.

BLAMING BERNIE
The view of most NSW Labor Right insiders is that Riordan is a nightmare as party president, who chooses to interfere with even the smallest of decisions that the party machine is required to make.

Because he has a day job, Riordan is busy so his involvement is sporadic and often poorly informed other than by reference to ancient verities and prejudices. He relies on his prodigious gut to make decisions and reckons data, facts and evidence will only cloud his judgment, according to those who’ve worked with the man.

Sources friendly with Matt Thistlethwaite – the recently brutally executed outgoing party secretary – say that his life was made a “living hell” by Riordan’s meddling, undermining and second-guessing.

Traditionally the party general secretary has been a position of enormous clout with the party president more a ceremonial post. Under the reign of Riordan error, that power balance has been reversed and it’s cost Labor plenty.

Optimists look to young Sam – who cut his teeth on Young Labor and demonstrated himself to be a far more ruthless operator than the nice guy Thistlethwaite – to cut down Riordan’s influence and then if necessary brutally remove him as Party President.

“If Riordan is still party President in two years, then it’s highly likely he’ll have chewed through Sam too,” one observer familiar with the men told VEXNEWS. “He is a cancer on our party and on the Right. He has to go.”

Riordan persistently tells those impatiently waiting his retirement that he is contemplating moving on, but always puts it off, unwilling to relinquish the reins of power.

“Everyone asks ‘What does Riordan want?’ (as an incentive to leave) and no-one can get a straight answer,” the observer explained.

The result of Riordan’s constant meddling is that the basics, like preselecting candidates in marginal seats have been left very late, with some MPs facing contests in circumstances that a strong party machine would never normally tolerate.

AXING ARBIB
Riordan’s critics say that supposed NSW Right faction leader Mark Arbib has not had the courage to stand up to the Labor T-Rex, demonstrating him to be all spin on SkyNews but no traction on Sussex Street.

Arbib’s attempted political thrill-kill of Senator Steve Hutchins in favour of the ousted Party secretary Thistlethwaite demonstrates his pattern of over-reach and under-delivery according to party observers.

Hutchins enjoyed the strong and emphatic backing of the TWU, SDA and HSU unions and was in a strong position to claim another term.

Meanwhile, Arbib was left looking weak because he couldn’t slot Hutchins despite saying he could and would and couldn’t come up with an answer to the frequently asked question “What has Mark done to deserve a safe Senate spot?”

Instead Senator Mike Forshaw took the hit, unable to muster the support Hutchins could despite Arbib attempting to put the pressure on by saying that he should retire because his highly-regarded wife Natalie Sykes-Hutchins had won preselection for a Victorian state seat.

Arbib’s undiplomatic conduct has been such that it nearly prompted Hutchins’ supporters at the TWU to vote for the Left’s candidate as NSW Party President before they decided to avoid the troubles that had beset the Victorian Right in terms of splits.

Arbib’s critics – who have been emboldened by his involvement in the catastrophic insulation bungle – say that his strategy has involved nothing more than “divide and rule” of the NSW branch.

“He likes to create a power vacuum and fill it. He has had many people conned, including Rudd and even he is waking up to the fact that below the froth is a very weak latte indeed,” one coffee afficionado and party hack claimed.

They cite many examples but none more powerful than his backing of Left faction candidates for the leadership – not just once with Nathan Rees whom he defended to the very end but also Carmel Tebbutt when it was clear Rees was unviable.

“How has it come to this?” one distressed Right faction asked VEXNEWS at the time when it looked like Arbib might get his way in installing a second leftist in charge.

State Right caucus members are in open revolt about Arbib’s conduct, insiders say and generally describe him with reference to the politically incorrect c-word. Arbib’s involvement in knifing his man Thistlethwaite was seen by cynics as a desperate attempt to buy himself back into favour with the state caucus and leadership. Kenneally and Roozendahl wanted a new general secretary and had loudly demanded his scalp. Arbib’s acquiescence has done nothing to assuage their contempt for the man though, insiders say.

“He has less clout than [discredited former national secretary] Tim Gartrell in Macquarie Street. He’s just not welcome there,” a Labor Right source explained.

In Club Fed, where his support base has been stronger, Arbib’s stocks are falling too as the Rudd government starts to have a long hard look at itself, the mistakes of 2009 and the people who led the government into them.

Insiders tell VEXNEWS that two great Labor leaders, Morris Iemma and Kim Beazley were stabbed in the back by Arbib and many with long memories in the Party are looking to return the favour one of these days. The Beazley brigades are not quite as organised or malevolent as those who grouped around Bill Hayden in the 1980s and they bear no ill-well towards Rudd but many blame Arbib for playing a central role in Beazley’s destruction.

Mark Arbib has every reason to look over his shoulder in the year ahead. Those who rise so rapidly can fall to the ground with a thud.

© 2010 VEXNEWS © 2012.