Labor
A FRACTION TOO MUCH FRICTION: Dargavel’s power grab reveals his inner eunuch
The Victorian State Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Socialist Left member Steve Dargavel has been left embarrassed after he embarked on a little cross-factional frolic this week.
Before Easter, Dargavel, who occupies the largely ceremonial position at the AMWU notionally above the state secretaries of the various divisions of the union, wrote to members of the ALP Administrative Committee demanding that an Andy Richards be appointed to fill a position of Campaign Field Officer at party Head Office.
Dargavel’s political background is that he is a former federal MP who served for two years before losing his seat, he then chummed up with the infamous Workers First fraction at the AMWU Metals division in Victoria at the time headed by Craig Johnston, a notorious criminal who was sentenced to two years and nine months jail after violent rampages through workplaces during industrial action.
ANDY RICHARDS WANTS A HEADOFFICE JOB
The motion was considered an odd thing for Dargavel to do because it interrupted a process that had been going on within the Socialist Left faction to fill the position, which is allocated under power-sharing agreements to the Left.
Most had expected Richards would be selected to replace Alison Vaughan, an acolyte of SL faction secretary Andrew Giles who had departed some time ago. Patriots will recall Ali Vaughan’s beau ministerial adviser Paul Erickson was cruelly attacked by means of fist by the rampaging Age journalist Leo “Fists of Fire” Shanahan at a Melbourne night-spot a couple of years back.
But for reasons that had Lefty’s scratching their heads resplendent with greasy hair product, Dargavel decided to assert his Cartman style authorit-eye by unilaterally declaring that Richards, who works at the AMWU, would get the job, with no further discussion, hand-holding, kumbayah singing and ritual goat slaughtering that VEXNEWS understands goes on within SL decision-making organs.
The play was simple.
Dargavel would unilaterally propose the appointment, without consultation with his SL factional colleagues. His newest BFF (best friend forever) Antony Thow at the NUW had promised that Dargavel’s motion would have at least ten votes from what we once perhaps unfortunately labelled the Ambition Faction alongside a grinning face of our favourite Senator David Feeney.
So Dargavel’s challenge was to arrange a decent chunk of SL votes to support the measure in addition to his chums from the NUW. He by no means needed a majority of the Left, just some icing to whack on top of the chunky fruit cake supplied by the NUW, SDA and associated brothers in arms.
The Ambition Faction couldn’t care less about Andy Richards per se. They have enough trouble keeping track of the whereabouts of their own head office operative Assistant Secretary Lisa Carey, who is believed these days to spend a majority of her time surfing seek.com for alternative employment opportunities. Carey struggles to get NUW chieftain Charlie Donnelly to return her phone calls these days, such is the cruelty of life in the unsentimental NUW fast lane.
Some believe a chap called Sebastian might be breathing down her neck in anticipation of his promotion. Others say that the second Assistant Secretary’s position is unnecessary and ought to be abolished.
But by offering to vote with Dargavel, and publicly seizing a majority on even this small issue, it would have sent a public message loud and clear that Thow’s mission to divide and rule the Socialist Left had succeeded.
DESTABILISING
Friendly scribes – like VEXNEWS – would immediately have been briefed and a story along the lines that the stability deal between the Labor Unity faction (Shorten-Conroy) and the Socialist Left was dead, or at least as wobbly as Terry Wallace’s coaching career at Richmond.
That could have potentially radically reshaped current discussions between the factions and fractions about the next round of Labor state and federal preselections in Victoria. Behind closed doors, once-were kayak partners turned frenemies Shorten and Feeney had made considerable progress in hammering out a deal that would keep almost everyone happy. That was potentially at risk as a result of the Thow-Dargavel war-drive.
By teaming up with Dargavel and other Left votes on Admin, the Ambition Faction could have made a powerful argument that the original stability deal between LU and the SL could be completely disregarded.
But our sources have long argued that while Steve Dargavel fancies himself – in the language of Club Fed Liberals – as a “big swinging dick”, he is in fact a slightly troublesome, charmless, plotting and ambitious eunuch serving in the court of inscrutable Emperor Dave Oliver, the AMWU’s national secretary and ally-chum of Senator Kim Carr, the one and true leader of the Socialist Left in a three piece suit.
After Dargavel’s letter, it became clear though that Dargavel was going to test his own cocksure qualities despite a flurry of faction phone calls demanding he step off. It was rumoured Carr’s lieutenant Kosmos Samaras planned an armed assault on Dargavel’s office, backed up his Army Reserve sub-faction.
THE REACTION
Within the Ambition Faction, the NUW were said to be cock-a-hoop about the whole thing, Feeney forces slightly less so and SDA folk still questioning how they were the junior coalition partner when they basically run the Right in most states.
And as late as yesterday afternoon, despite considerable pressure from the process junkies and navel gazers who dominate the SL faction, Dargavel defiantly stared them down, saying he intended that his young lickspittle on Admin would be moving his motion regardless of what his factional comrades said they wanted.
It was conduct most unbecoming indeed by the standards of the Stalinist SL whose enthusiasm for binding caucuses could even extend to voting on the number of souvlakis Comrade Lee Tarlamis was permitted to eat during a meet.
THE DEBACLE
Dargavel’s self-confident fruitcake turned out to be nothing more than ashes in his mouth when he realised that it was doubtful his motion would even find a seconder from the Left. The Kim Il Carr Soviet Army had rolled out the tanks and rounded up all the red-shirt protesters, finding only Dargavel keeping the faith. All were in agreement that the SL’s processes had to be honoured and that Dargavel’s burst of individualism had to be crushed in the manner once reserved for a Prague spring.
Except Dargavel who was moving imaginary divisions around his map wondering where all his allies had gone.
Just an hour or so before the meeting, Dargavel made it known from his HQ that he would not be pressing the Andy Richards issue after all and it was deferred to the next Party officers’ meeting.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STROGANOFF
All in all, a curious and somewhat embarrassing episode for Comrade Dargavel who is desperately keen to prove himself much more than a eunuch and indeed studly enough to triumphantly return to the Members & Guests Dining Room at Federal Parliament where he once served for a couple of years and is keen to resume his career as an obscure yet well-pampered backbencher where he is honoured by the sultry babes of Chairman’s Lounge.
As we noted yesterday, some believe that Dargavel’s enthusiasm to return to public life is at least partly motivated by his lust to qualify for the pre-Latham defined benefit parliamentary superannuation scheme that could make the workers of the world rhetoric enthusiast at least a million bucks if he can rack up a few more terms in a federal seat.
Some think the power eunuch particularly craves Lord Harold of Jenkins’s seat of Scullin, that is also the target of the affections of SL faction secretary Andrew Giles who regards Preston as an outer suburb. Both are also mentioned as possibilities for Thomastown, the seat occupied by the supposedly perpetually retiring state Minister Peter Batchelor.
Discussion
40 comments for “A FRACTION TOO MUCH FRICTION: Dargavel’s power grab reveals his inner eunuch”
Post a comment
I will vote with Charlie Donnelly and the masons.
We have a secret handshake…
You will kneel before me, SL eunuchs.
My union in bed with the SDA?
It’s enough stress to make me head down to David Jones for some retail therapy.
Steve yes your all talk no real power base. Keep delivering the lunch orders.
I note the motion was seconded by Dean Mighell’s panties thief, the infamous Howard Worthing.
Already well out his depth, a ineffective lefty union hack, he can’t even cut it with kindie level politics as a local councillor. Definitely not a big swinging dick.
In an area where the Right need all the help they can get, he helps out. When good patriots need a hand, he has helped out. The councillor is going alright.
Whose fax number is on that ?
Stability Alliance becomes the Axis of Oops!
Andrew Landeryou is now the comical ali of the VEXNEWS faction – that strange alliance of former Labor Unity renegades and the political wing of the SL. In practice, the VEXNEWS faction is led by cdes Newnham, Carr and Andrew Giles. In the press they call themselves the “stability alliance”, although terms like ShortCons are also used.
The so-called stability coalition claimed in January that it had 70% of the Party in its corner – and yet at last night’s meeting of the Administrative Committee it could not even muster 17 of the 33 votes it needed to rule the party.
The chief leaders of the VEXNEWS faction, Senators Conroy and Carr, promised us a regime that would govern the ALP with an iron fist.
But it turns out they don’t have the numbers to govern anything.
Oops!
The VEXNEWS faction had planned to do 2 things at last nights meeting; firstly, to impose a preselection timetable upon the Party, and, secondly, to install the Carr nominee as a ALP Campaign Field Officer.
Carr and Conroy are keen to get the federal preselections over quickly – and then spend the rest of the year acting like bloodthirty ghouls with the state preselections.
Needless to say, they have trouble explaining how such a preselection timetable leads to stability or helps the Brumby Government.
Oops.
Carr, Giles and Newnham believed that in “doing over” Andy Richards they would be “teaching the left unions a lesson”.
But the SL Unions have not responded to threats as Carr hoped.
Oops.
Instead, the VEXNEWS faction suddenly discovered that their many opponents actually have a (fragile) majority on the Administrative Commitee. Discovering that their absolute power was a mirage, Newnham & Giles flew into a panic, and aborted their promised jihad.
This is why the VEXNEWS faction – the one led at Admin Committee by the dashing Newnham and Giles – was too scared to even put their preselection timetable to a vote. Instead they collapsed, and agreed to the resolution proposed by Labor Unity and the SL Unions. They agreed to defer the issue to the May meeting; that is, they agreed to the diktat of the LU/SL Unions majority. Only days earlier, these same hairy chested operatives like Conroy had told Premier Brumby they would deliver it whether he liked it or not! But on the big night they collapsed.
Oops.
And make no mistake. A panicked Giles convinced Dargavel to not proceed with Andy’s appointment on the promise that his nomination would go forward at the next meeting as a formal SL nomination – rather than one backed by the 12 Labor Unity and 5 Left members of the commitee who stand together against the “axis of oops”.
At the end of this signal defeat for the “axis of oops”, two things are clear. The supporters of the VEXNEWS stability agreement do not command a majority of the Administrative Committee. And comical ali landeryou is left with the task of spinning defeat into victory.
It ain’t working ali!
Does the word “agendiarized” even exist? My Word dictionary says no
martin pakula’s
Dargavel needs to find some new friends….being mates with Antony Thow is akin to bending over for the soap in a prison shower block.
See….I am a power player after all! Now my head wont seem so disproportially big to the rest of my body
You’ll still have to swallow for me, Big Head.
Anyone want to cum to the ETU shemale lingerie party?
Come on guys, lets talk this through… Just call me on my mobile 0409 W-O-R K-E-R
Why didn’t Worthing second the montion at the meeting if He put His name on the notice?
Or call me 0409 W-A-N-K-E-R
Every time Vex writes pap about the internal crap in the ALP, a contribution like the above from Anonymous at 14.59 appears.
There is a distinct style that some believe to be a senior elected official. Whoever it is, it’s clearly not a complete coincidence.
Let’s dissect the lies, one at a time.
The ’stability deal’ is firmly in place with the details about the preselections still being worked through. A productive player in this has been David Feeney, offered little assistance by sociopaths and chain chewers Antony Thow and Charles in Charge Donnelly.
Feeney now privately concedes the deal will stick and wants Thow to stop being such an excitable puppy dog.
Key players who will need to sprinkle holy water on the deal include Gillard and Brumby and they are being squared away.
Feeney and Shorten again play an important role here in evolving the stability deal to include as many as possible.
But there’ll be some losers. Hopefully Feeney has told the NUW that’s going to be them.
While that happens, wreckers from the NUW continue to try to kiss up to the CFMEU – keep up the slagging of them VEX, if Landeryou goes missing we’ll know why this time and hopefully it will be permanent – and to the limpest dick in the stud farm, ‘Master of Ceremonies’ Steve Dargavel.
Yesterday was hysterical.
Dargavel and the NUW brigade seemed so confident in the morning and yet so subdued in the evening.
Egg on their faces was exactly right.
Then the NUW nob Bill Bolitho’s membership was deferred again. He has left Tasmania but his Tasmanian branch membership keeps following him around. He is not being welcomed back to Victoria any time soon just so he can try to knock off Matt Viney.
Shafting him on his membership is not really playing fair. The fact that it can be done does show the NUW who is in charge though doesn’t it?
And again George Seitz’s lustful desires to control every branch in Gorton were refused.
Not exactly suggestive of an NUW majority. Fragile or otherwise, they have nothing more than their dick in their hands.
Admin’s numbers are temporarily skewed in favour of the NUW/SDA, those numbers aren’t going to last much longer. There’ll be a brand new shiny Admin by Christmas.
By then the HSU will not be supporting Feeney any more depriving him of Admin votes and opportunities to freeload on Jeff’s credit card at local brothels. A subject on which VEXNEWS has been very quiet. Perhaps Senor Landeryou was once also a guest of this hospitality too. The right-wingers are so sharing. With other people’s money that is.
If there was a Carr candidate for the Head Office position, it’s Andy Richards. No other name has been bandied around. No one wanted the job which is why it was left vacant for so long.
Richards is close to Dargavel – the master of ceremonies – but he is also supported by the people who really run the Metal Workers, like Dave Oliver. They’re happy he wants the job and wish him well.
If the NUW had 12 votes plus 5 imaginary votes from the Master of Ceremonies, they would have had a majority.
And that majority could have sacked Newnham, sold off the Head Office building to the Jeff Jackson Property Trust and whatever else they’d thought of. Maybe build a statue for Kate Dunn in the carpark for all of her backseat adventures.
And on Conroy, he made no threats to JB about anything that I’ve heard of. They get on very well these days and Carr gets on well with both. Conroy has entered a new peacemaker phase and only raises his voice at the football and even that is muffled by the glass of the corporate boxes the Minister now frequents. No one can hear him scream.
The federal preselections will probably all go on without any candidate being opposed. No one really cared whether they were held concurrently with the state preselections or not. Conroy took notice of Feeney’s fatwa that he be rolled. But it was more with a smirking nod and a quiet determination to get square with the cheeky little fat fuck at a later date.
State preselections are more complicated with a number of long serving MPs for the chop, an outcome being secretly pushed by Dan O’Brien/Tom Cargill/ Nick Reece in Brumby’s office to ensure Brumby can present a freshened new team for the 2010 election.
People like George Seitz and Christine Campbell have to go for there being any sense of a new generation coming through.
This is not just the Left saying it, Shorten/Feeney say it, the Premier’s staff say it too.
While Vex is undoubtedly someone’s propagandist, I’m yet to figure out whose propagandist it is. At best it is inconsistent.
Sometimes Landeryou is running lines for the hard-core Kroger right of the Liberals, sometimes he’s revealing their secret bloggers and getting them sacked, praising fundamentalist Christians, revealing Family First candidates who flashed themselves online, sometimes he’s infiltrating the Greens, disrupting the Socialist Left, even praising Carr, backing Feeney, slamming Feeney, telling us how wonderful the NUW is industrially while calling Charlie Donnelly a mullah terrorist or something.
He’s either confused, a very naughty boy or just calls it how he sees it. Or is a nutter. Perhaps all of the above.
But to say he’s consistently on the side of the SL is an insult to those in the SL who have put up with his remorseless, vicious shit for more years than I care to count.
Giles in particular copped so much abuse he very nearly sued Landeryou on two occasions after some fanciful claims about him stealing from the SL bank account and funding the purchase of Syrian rocket launchers or something like that.
Leaping to a conspiracy theory that Giles is now supported by VEXNEWS or vice versa is a bit of a joke.
Desperate times, desperate men can get awfully creative.
The NUW’s stupid misadventure with Dargavel isn’t even designed to change preselection outcomes, it’s a pissing contest within the Right about whether the Ambition Faction or ShortCons run it. Who cares?
Obviously Labor Unity right wingers do but everyone looks on and yawns. If Dargavel is duped into playing a stupid game to disrespect the elected SL leadership to be a pawn in a fight within the right, then he’s going to end up paying a high price.
Dargavel can’t be that stupid, can he?
My bloody prostate is playing up again.
c’mon lisa, show some dignity and resign… you are an absolute joke.. you’re own faction is gathering the numbers to roll you..
Wally the only meat you are ‘working up’ is your own.
Rick Wallace in the Australian ” The Australian Workers Union normally covers bridge work, but it appears the more militant CFMEU and AMWU claimed the job by signing up members on site.” Now we know what what VEXNEWS is so excited about – the ‘patriots’ are having a demarcation dispute.
It’s a joy & a delight to see all this ego & jockeying for bragging rights over the moth-eaten carcase of democracy in the ALP. Here we are in the midst of the economic deluge & what are these clowns posturing over? Some minor union flunkey job with the duties of handing the dunny paper to some other non-entity, supposedly mobilised on a historicl path to secure better pay & conditions for workers, but in reality just there for the drinks tab at the local watering hole.
CFMEU = a bunch a militant violent unemployable masturbating thugs.
“State preselections are more complicated with a number of long serving MPs for the chop, an outcome being secretly pushed by Dan O’Brien/Tom Cargill/ Nick Reece in Brumby’s office to ensure Brumby can present a freshened new team for the 2010 election.”
Langdon must go
Langdon is OK, the ones who must go are: Biscuit Tin and No Knickers (Forest Hill).
why is Forest Hill called “No Knickers”? what is that story?
Will big head Thow and Errol Flynn Donnelly ever get anything right?
My head isn’t big, it’s just that my body is too small.
Shut up Thowie and get back under my desk and I’ll give you a warm breakfast.
Ah porridge! My favourite! Tastes like Tim Kennedy tho!
Hey fellas – that fucking Dargavel isn’t join our daisy chair of love!!!
The more the merrier Tim.
Anyway, I’m no eunich – I’ll prove to all you Right Wing bastards I’m a big swinging dick…! Here have a look – hang on, wait til Richo hops off it.
I will just slip off my red lace panties and you will all see my big swinging dick.
What about me,
it isn’t fair,
all i want is a
trannie with red hair,
can’t you see I wanna give,
but s/he just gives more than,
s/he takes
Shut up Thowie, you’re not worth a cunt full of cold water.
If you shave your arms Tim, I’ll roll you in flour and give you a crack.
Hey Hairy Arms, go platt your shit.
Steve Dargavel fancies himself – in the language of Club Fed Liberals – as a “big swinging dick”
Oh dear, there ain’t nothing to swing, not an asset poor ol’ Stevie was blessed with. As they say when you don’t have you talk.