HAG
Fascinating. Yesterday I heard that the ALP Left faction had endorsed two candidates for the Senate on Sunday. They are set to run against sitting ALP Senators Kerry O’Brien and Helen Polley.
The Left backed candidates are Anne Urquhart State Secretary of the AMWU and the ubiquitous Kevin Harkins, State Secretary of the ETU. (No doubt his repayment for standing down in 2007 in Franklin). Urquhart is the convener of the Left and Harkins is the previous convener, both holding the position because of their large ALP and therefore factional block votes.
Harkins’s vote will also have been enhanced by the return, after many years in the wilderness of the Green-leaning HEF to the Left & ALP fold. At a National Level the ETU has strong links to the Greens and has made generous donations to Green candidates
One Labor insider told Hag that the faction that once carried the intellectual heart and soul of the ALP had sunk so low as to become nothing more than a machine for promoting “the unelectable and unpalatable” to the Senate.
She also told me that amazingly this deal had the support of David O’Byrne, who is running for the ALP in Franklin, and it is assumed, the local branch of the Miscellaneous Workers Union. How will the national office and leaders of the MWU react you wonder.
A deal between the Metals, ETU and Misco’s is very unusual. The deal is made yet more strange because it sees this new grouping turning against a sitting MWU backed Senator and former State Secretary of that union and David O’Byrne’s former boss and one time mentor.
This petty power play should really ugly when it is clear that two Hobart based union secretaries are challenging two Launi-based Senators.
Said my insider: The last time O’Brien’s preselection came up there was a major battle between the Metals candidate David Price and the Misco’s based group led by the two O’s O’Brien and O’Byrne who were then in bitter dispute with their former factional mates in the Left.
As for the group turning against Helen Polley … well that’s far less surprising.
