Federal Government

TIME FOR TRUTH: Lefty spin wears thin in supposed stoush over two unwinnable seats

Not that it matters a great deal, but from behind a paywall, Socialist Left aligned blogger Andrew Crook opined on behalf of the increasingly isolated and paranoid SL secretary Andrew Giles in a spelling and grammatical error ridden commentary that made a number of false claims about the Victorian Labor Right. We initially decided not to bother dealing with the rant but a patriot source persuaded us otherwise and it’s interesting at some level to compare the two Andrews’ fantasies with the good news of the VEXNEWS patriot army of well-informed citizen reporters.

Andrew Crook wrote:

A fresh factional war has broken out inside the Victorian ALP after Federal MP Bill Shorten and Senator Stephen Conroy came close to backing rival preselection candidates at a fiery meeting of the state Public Office Selection Committee last night.

VEXNEWS: Hardly. There was – in fact – universal support among Labor Unity POSC members for Graham McBride. Only one candidate (Graham) requested a chance to speak to the LU POSC members, and McBride is a traditional moderate and close ally of Labor Unity member and LegCo Government Whip Matt Viney.

Amid chaotic horse trading, the left-aligned, high-profile Frankston lawyer Helen Constas was finally endorsed as Labor’s candidate for the federal seat of Dunkley with 54% of the vote, despite a last-minute decision by Conroy forces to abandon the left for right-aligned rival Graham McBride. But voters loyal to Conroy were said to be enormously hesitant, with some indicating their disdain for the Shorten camp by staying home.

VEXNEWS: Funnily enough, the level of interest among even the most seasoned POSC members about the Labor candidates in two unwinnable seats was reasonably low. Members from all factions and fractions failed to attend. Several key unions normally active in these matters thought it best those who gave a sh*t could sort it out among themselves. That view prevailed among both left and right types.

The stability pact signed by the left and the so-called “ShortCons” in January contains a mutual support clause that should have seen both the Shorten and Conroy forces supporting Constas.

VEXNEWS: Dunkley was actually very, very clearly and expressly mentioned in the “contested” column in the stability agreement, a draft of which was published on VEXNEWS some time ago. There was an undisputed agreement to disagree about the seat and have a contest there should have been sufficient interest. And not a soul from the Socialist Left was expecting it to play out otherwise except possibly Comrade Constas and regular Crikey source Andrew Giles who was seen waving his arms about in a state of confected agitation about the non-issue. Calmer and wiser heads in the SL prevailed, they focus their concern on seats they can win. Giles just likes to hear the sound of his voice to reassure himself he isn’t quite the loser we all think he is. Certainly a sloppy effort by Crook not to check these basic facts. We suggest he search VEXNEWS archives more thoroughly next time.

But it is believed Shorten insisted the Conroy camp instead fall in behind the notional right candidate McBride. Ironically, Shorten was then double-crossed by enemies at the NUW, who endorsed a third candidate, Monash councillor Joy Banerji, despite earlier indications to the contrary. The militant Construction, Forestry Mining and Energy Union, who excluded themselves from the stability pact, again abandoned the Left and backed Banerji.

VEXNEWS: Shorten supported a friend and ally of Labor Unity in a contested seat. The NUW’s position wasn’t a surprise or deception of any kind, there were different perspectives on the issue operating within the Ambition Faction with the NUW folk prevailing in the view that they should support Minister Tim Holding’s ally Banerji, who would also have made a fine candidate in the view of Seb Zwalf who was her key backer and was seen as principally responsible for the outcome.

Constas will now take on sitting Liberal Bruce Billson at the 2010 election. Billson is holding the seat with a 4.3% margin and would face a drubbing if the latest opinion polling is repeated at the ballot box.

VEXNEWS: But to put this into perspective, the publisher of VEXNEWS is willing to ride on bicycle wearing boardshorts alone from the People’s Republic of Brunswick to the broad sunlit uplands of Chelsea by the Bay should the crazy, loon lawyer prevail. That’s literally putting my skin in the game.

“Bill has egg all over his face”, one factional source told Crikey this morning.

VEXNEWS: How so, our amused factional sources ask, excluding the possibility Crook was referring to that delightful scrambled egg dish on offer at the Flower Drum. The person with egg on his face was really the chronically over-reacting Andrew Giles who is so often unfavourably compared with his paramilitary younger rivals in the Carr sub-faction who support Essendon supporter Khalil Eideh, the upper house MP. Eideh by contrast to Giles has been generous in his praise of Bill Shorten and is more honestly reflective of mainstream SL thought on Shorten than Giles who appears increasingly grey, lonely and isolated in the manner of a leper on the Isle of Soon-to-be Damned.

In the lead-up to last night’s meeting, Crikey understands that the Conroy camp were feverishly hitting the phones to talk McBride out of running after it became clear Shorten loyalists were preparing to fall in behind him.

VEXNEWS: Just not true. Some in LU were supporting McBride but because he was on 42% of the vote, and it looked like it just totally impossible for him to prevail, there was an effort to work out whether it was smart from McBride and the group for him to persist with his candidacy. The idea that Conroy’s people were supporting the looney left lawyer is just wrong. There was no split. Conroy’s interest – being a senior Cabinet minister and all dealing with Telstra and the NBN and such – in the unwinnable Labor seat was about as close to zero as is mathematically possible.

McBride ran for Dunkley in 2007, substantially reducing sitting Liberal Bruce Billsons’ (sic) margin.

VEXNEWS: Bill Shorten played a very active role in assisting McBride, explaining his continued support which comes from across all of Labor Unity, including Conroy’s people. But the prevailing view now is that the Victorian federal Labor primary reached a historically high watermark and is very unlikely to go up much more, certainly of 4% or so. Although it will be interesting to see what Crikey’s William Bowe and other serious electoral experts think about how this will play out. Certainly the Liberals we’ve spoken with are confident Billson’s hard-working approach will get her there.

Insiders say that Helen Constas is more barking mad than the average frenzied Doberman. When McBride was on the verge of withdrawing in Constas’s favour after she’d polled well locally, her aggressive approach on the ground made him reconsider. It is clear to most observers that while she has energy, she has little political judgement and not a lot of people skills. Nice guy Bruce Billson will destroy her, in the nicest possible way.

In the other contest decided last night, left-backed CPSU official Rupert Evans was endorsed for Aston on the back of a strong grassroots vote held on Sunday and Monday.

VEXNEWS: It is conceivable that past sentence was either written by Rupert himself, Andrew Giles or Rupert’s mum. There were 28 votes in total in the rotten borough and Rupe had been working them over for a year and had them solidly in his pocket. Patriot ex-staffer and economist and Yale graduate Daniel Mulino should have been the candidate but was defeated by someone who has a snowflake’s chance in hell of persuading the outer suburbanites there to vote for an ultra-leftist public service union official called Rupert.

Evans will now take on Liberal candidate Alan Tudge and is reported to rate his chances of pegging back the Liberals’ 6% margin.

VEXNEWS: Rupe is a dupe. He won’t win. You’ve read it here first.

The bloodshed follows last month’s wild meeting of the ALP Administrative Committee meeting, when Conroy acolytes tapped the underqualified Mehmet Tillem for the vacant state secretary position ahead of John Brumby staffer Nick Rees. A compromise was finally reached two weeks later with Rees agreeing to run next year’s election campaign before making way for right apparatchik Noah Carrol (sic) in 2011.

VEXNEWS: Mehmet Tillem was almost universally regarded as a very strong candidate whose ethnicity was likely to attract racially motivated attacks from the AgeBC. That’s exactly what happened the morning after he nearly got up. They went to town on him, with words like “Turk” “branch-stacker” and “Suleyman” dripping off the tongue. We doubt there’s been a wider read, more intellectually inclined, tough, smart, decent operator in Labor moderate politics than Mehmet Tillem. Even his foes in the Ambition Faction rate Tillem extremely highly and his parliamentary political future is all but assured. Stick that in your racist private-school marijuana chugging bong pipe and smoke it.

One senior Right faction source questioned the future of Shorten’s allegience (sic) to the peace deal when contacted by Crikey.

VEXNEWS: Yeh, there’s a lot of Right faction sources agreeing to talk to the likes of Crikey these days. They have VEXNEWS, the home of the free. Perhaps Andrew Giles’ lack of politics permits him to describe himself as a “senior Right faction source”, we suspect his lengthy talks with one-time ally Robin Scott must have messed with his head, as Mr Scott can be extremely persuasive and erudite.

“The Shorten people are hedging their bets but there’s a residual view among Fiona Richardson and Stephen Conroy that’s in their best interest to back the left.”

VEXNEWS: Patriots Fiona Richardson and Stephen Conroy aren’t normally in the business of backing the left. They are true-blue patriots and both extremely busy pursuing their portfolio responsibilities.

“When an faction eats itself it’s usually a question of what’s next on the menu.”

VEXNEWS: Other than KFC, we simply cannot imagine what that means. Certainly patriots enjoyed the chicken kiev offering at Friday night’s Bill Shorten extravaganza where the MP was lavished with praise by his Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and a good time was had by all, including factionally Swiss Bob Mammarella who continues to astound in his resilience and shrewd ways. If only he’d return to the Right Light, all would well in the world.

The fresh split in the right (sic) another blow to stability after a rift stemming from last year’s Kororoit by-election boiled over into mass bloodshed.

VEXNEWS: That’s two references to bloodshed in the one article. Our politically incorrect source pondered ‘Is Andrew Crook having his period?’

The tensions led to the Victorian Ombudsman’s investigation into Brimbank Council.

VEXNEWS: Feel the conspiracy theory. There are many in Brimbank who disagree with that assessment, including the right-bashers at The Age.

The latest blow-up means there are now at least three rights in the Victorian ALP, with the so-called “rebel” or “fringe right” comprising the SDA and the NUW, continuing to observe the new brawl from the sidelines.

VEXNEWS: This is a complete fabrication. Bill Shorten remains the one and true convenor of the Labor Unity faction, supported by Senator Steve Conroy, Richard Marles and Steve Newnham. They occasionally disagree but not on much and certainly much less than the component parts of the Ambition Faction who include a real rainbow of philosophical difference. And certainly a lot less again than the Socialist Left which has an active anti-leadership rebellion led by the CFMEU that rears its ugly head on occasion, in between workplace run-throughs, picket violence and chumming it up with ‘gangland’ figures.

For example, in one sign of cohesion, Newnham’s planned farewell victory lap dinner will have Shorten speaking in his mate’s honour and it’s likely to be a very, very well attended function across the ALP. There is much more unity in Labor Unity than its socialist or ambitious rivals would care to admit. They are “Brothers in arms” one told VEXNEWS while pinning a pic of greying socialist Andrew Giles to the dartboard in his den.

Rumours are rife that Shorten may now throw his weight behind a so-called “PM’s faction” with the Prime Minister already called (sic) for preselections to be halted in La Trobe and McEwen to install hand-picked candidates.

VEXNEWS: We think that in the Rudd Government, everyone is in the PM’s faction and if they’re not, bad things might happen, so that whole sentence makes very little sense.

“There is a tangible sense among Stephen [Conroy] and Fiona [Richardson], that the faction has moved beyond them and they lost control,” said one right wing factional player close to the negotiations.

VEXNEWS: Presumably this fabricated quote refers to an ‘intangible’ sense but that doesn’t matter much because it seems that the two very senior Labor Unity parliamentary figures continue to play a vital and central role in the governments they serve and the moderate faction they help run. Rumours of their demise – like much else coming from Andrew Giles – are greatly exaggerated.

More credible rumours are around that the National Executive might overturn the Aston preselection in particular and maybe even Dunkley too given the absurdly low number of local members voting in both. Developing…

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