Albanese faces AUKUS backlash from Victorian Labor Party faithful

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Powerful unions want Labor’s rank and file to formally condemn the $368 billion AUKUS submarine deal this weekend, potentially setting up an awkward clash with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when he addresses Victorian Labor’s first state conference in four years

Both the prime minister and Premier Daniel Andrews will deliver speeches to party faithful at the conference, according to several state and federal government sources.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The conference will be the first since 2019 – before the pandemic, Melbourne’s long lockdowns, and the federal intervention that followed revelations by The Age about branch stacking, especially by former Labor right powerbroker Adem Somyurek.

The 606 delegates will be asked to vote on a motion from manufacturing union the AMWU seen by The Age, slamming Australia’s decision to acquire a nuclear-powered fleet from the United States and the prospect of the Albanese government “dragging Australia into a new Cold War, rather than pursuing the labour movement’s longstanding commitment to a peaceful and independent foreign and defence policy”.

AMWU Victorian secretary Tony Mavromatis said he expected his motion would win strong support from the conference floor.

“We will push ahead with our motion, no matter who is at the conference, including prime ministers,” he said. “The AUKUS deal is a terrible arrangement for Australia. It lets down Australian workers, apprentices and trainees and Australian manufacturing. We should not be getting into nuclear.”

The AUKUS deal was initially agreed to by former prime minister Scott Morrison and later supported by federal Labor.

While Andrews is expected to receive a hero’s welcome after Labor’s resounding November election victory, the conference is the first opportunity for years for Labor’s rank and file to vent over the big issues facing the state, including the housing crisis.

About one in 10 of the draft motions to be voted on deal specifically with housing, including one calling for an increase in social and affordable homes as a proportion of all Victorian housing.

Another calls for the state government to “limit the number of nights per year owners can rent out properties as short-stay accommodation”, an early-stage Labor policy first flagged by The Age last month.

The motions, known as “urgency resolutions”, are opportunities for card-carrying members and unions to influence party policy.

However, they can be rewritten, merged or dropped between now and the weekend as factions and powerbrokers negotiate over which policies to support or reject.

To be held at the Moonee Valley Racecourse, the conference will also be the first public display of factional muscle since the federal intervention.

Labor insiders from across the party agree the Socialist Left will have more weight than four years ago with the faction having grown in strength after an internal investigation into branch stacking led to the cancellation of about 1800 memberships, mainly from the right faction.

Adding to the Left’s influence has been the move of the former National Union of Workers out of the Right and into the Socialist Left faction as it merged with United Voice to form the United Workers Union.

Some party insiders also see the weekend meeting as an important preparation for the federal conference in Brisbane in August, where the AUKUS submarine deal and stage three tax cuts are expected to feature prominently.

Labor’s national executive has administered the branch since branch stacking revelations were aired in June 2020.

The state conference was traditionally the setting for often passionate public rows over policy and factional grievances, especially in the tumultuous 1970s and ’80s. Conferences have been more stage-managed in recent years.

A key change at this year’s conference will be the election of committees, including the powerful administrative committee, by postal ballot rather than from the conference floor.

The move follows a complaint to the party’s dispute tribunal by veteran Labor activist Eric Derricott about the factional control over elections at the conference, but will leave the results of the election unknown for some weeks.

After this conference all such elections will be held by secret ballot.

Current state Labor president Susie Byers said Victorian Labor had achieved much in the past three years, “not just with election victories, but reforms to our branch that have made the organisation one our members can be proud to belong to”.

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