STORMING THE BASTILLE: Kathy Jackson Encourages Debate With Letter To Patriots

Health Services Union official and leading Labor moderate Kathy Jackson is publicly pressing for the re-entry of the National Union of Workers into the Victorian moderate faction Labor Unity.

While the move would cement a moderate majority in the Victorian ALP, some Labor Unity members remember their departure and voting with the Left with considerable rancour.

Should the NUW wish to pursue it, their return to Labor Unity is probably inevitable now that the embittered Greg Sword (occasionally seen drunk in ambulances) has been retired out to become the General Manager of LUCRF, one of the better performing super funds in Australia.

Various players in the Labor Right, orginally ranging from the industrious Industry Minister Theo Theophanous and now the Action Jacksons are trying to bring the NUW back into the Labor Unity fold.

THE LETTER
Here is the text of Kathy's letter sent to the Labor Unity email list which was sent to everybody at some point in the interests of encouraging intra-factional debate and harmony. Good to see Kathy J putting it to good use:

Dear Fellow Labor Unity Member

You might recall that last year I sent out several messages to you (and other LU members) outlining my concerns about the lack of accountability and transparency amongst the LU leadership. These were prompted in part by the debacle of the Hotham preselection battle and a series of preselection deals which, I consider, served only the interests of a small cabal of LU officials without regard for, or reference to, the LU faction more generally.

The LU faction is not a vehicle for promoting the preselection and ministerial careers of four or five people, largely without regard to the faction generally. The faction exists to promote programs, policies and candidates which continue Labor's tradition of moderate, steady-as-she-goes, liberal-democratic reform to which Australians can relate and which offers Labor the prospect of prolonged periods of state and federal government to bed down those reforms.

Last year I, and the HSU in Victoria, flagged that we would adopt a more openly critical position of secret deals designed to serve the short term interests of a few. This came to a head recently when the POSC met to select candidates for marginal federal seats. Several strange things happened at this meeting of the POSC.

A preselection candidate for the seat of Deakin, Phillip Lynch, (OC: aka Peter Lynch, aka Dr Evil) originally said to be supported by LU, did not get up supposedly because he refused to join LU.

Since the POSC meeting, the HSU has learnt that he was never asked to join and in fact had no problem in joining. (OC: Lynch was a member of Labor Unity in fact since 2004 but had decided to rat and roll with the Bob Sercombe and Left aligned so-called "Independents" beforehand)

Instead LU support was swung behind an ETU endorsed candidate, Mike Symon, resulting in him winning preselection.

Had the HSU known that Lynch was being lied to by the LU leadership - pretending to support him while orchestrating sufficient support for Symon - the HSU would have supported Lynch. (This pattern of pretend support evokes memories of Hotham).

There is a pattern emerging of using up LU members and supporters. The LU gains support from rank-and-file members in the branches, uses their votes to increase representation at conference and POSC, goes through the pretence of supporting candidates from the rank-and-file and having these endorsed by the LU faction, but then ratting them up in secret deals with other factions and subfactions taking place outside the scrutiny of the LU faction generally. In these negotiations the positions of LU stalwarts and loyalists are sacrificed to make sure a small cabal advances in their own preselections and ministerial ambitions.

At the same POSC meeting the HSU declined to support (OC: Labor Unity faction member) Peter McMullin - a candidate anointed by the LU leadership (but not the faction) - because of his background. McMullin has been a player in the Spotless company, a company up to its neck in contracting-out of hospital services, particularly in the Kennett era, resulting in job losses and the erosion of employment conditions. LU members might understand that the relationship between Spotless and the HSU is, shall we say, tense. The HSU did not support Mr. McMullin in his bid for preselection in Corangamite. (OC: As it has been explained to the OC what happened is that Lynch had told his former faction Labor unity that he wouldn't be their candidate in Deakin, then Labor Unity went looking for more votes for a Labor Unity candidate in Corangamite. It found them from the Union and Community Alliance faction of patriots who were happy to support Peter McMullin in Corangamite providing Labor Unity supported their canidate Mike Symon in Deakin. A fair swap some would say. While the HSU maintain that the deal over Deakin was done a long time ago, possibly on the night that the UCA candidate in Scullin, Nathan Murphy lost his seat. If you can follow all that, you're paying for too much attention to the OC. For the good of the economy please go back to work)

LU is a broad group, made up disparate elements. If the position of the faction is to be maintained in the long term, then it's about time that the faction's leadership put an end to self-serving deals and started acting in the interests of the faction as a whole.

Ironically that is the precise complaint made by the National Union of Workers at the time it left LU. (OC: The OC loves Kathy J. She is feisty when others are cowards. Loyal when others are weak. A talent, as they say. But to characterise the NUW's reasons for voting with the Socialist Left in that way is pure spin of the kind that would even make the OC Propagana Unit blush. The NUW didn't leave because of a desire to "end self-serving deals". They left to pursue a self-serving deal which led to some good people losing their positions and the Socialist Left gaining a position of dominance in what had been a moderate dominated branch. Many of the NUW folk are good people, led terribly astray by Sword at the time. But it doesn't make their departure honourable and no amount of ex post facto justification can make it so. They ratted and voted with people they essentially opposed on almost everything just to exact a little payback. It was an exercise of power not only without glory but without honour as well. Most of the NUW folk I know are particularly embarrassed about it as well they should be. BUT, if they did the wrong thing by voting with the Left, it stands to reason that their return is welcome and they should be cheered on for that. That's the verdict of the OC anyway.)

I say ironically because the HSU and the NUW have a history. Few unions have allowed their relationship to suffer so much as a result of factional toings and froings in the ALP. (OC: That is possibly the politest description of Sword's repeated meddling in the Health Services Union I've ever heard. Kathy's skills of diplomacy here are Kissinger-like.) I won’t bore you repeating the details (which are pretty well known - if you don’t know then call me and I'm happy to tell you). The most important thing is that the HSU is putting that history behind us. At a time when unions are fighting for their lives against Howard and where we need to pull out all the stops to win the next federal election, inter-union dummy spitting is well and truly off the agenda. We know that NUW has the same attitude. (OC: All a good thing no doubt)

In fact the HSU is considering supporting NUW National Branch Secretary, Charlie Donnelly, in his bid to be elected to the National Executive of the ALP. We think that a senior, serving Victorian union secretary from a centre union could make a positive contribution to the Executive. The HSU hopes too that a rapprochement between our two unions could assist the process of bring the NUW back to LU. The NUW founded the faction and it's sad that it continues to be outside of it. The HSU's message is this: if given the history between the HSU and NUW we're all able to put the past behind us, maybe its time for others to suck it up and move on too. Our strongly preferred option is that the NUW rejoin.

In the meantime, like any other LU union, the HSU is able to support any candidate for National Executive from the National Right. It's important to say this because we've already heard the scuttle that, in some way, the HSU is ratting on LU if we support Charlie Donnelly for the National Executive. It's always in the interests of incumbents to insinuate that a failure to support their reelection
is a betrayal. But just as we needed a shake up in the last round of federal pre-selections, it's appropriate to have a hard look at the field for National Executive. The HSU will carefully scrutinize the full field of National Right candidates, once it's known, before deciding who to support.

I know from my discussions with LU members generally that there is concern about the direction of the faction and our apparently ever-growing tendency to eat our own (OC: Peter McMullin presumably feels this way too). There is a good deal of cynicism in LU about the small group that's directing traffic in the faction, and I share some of those concerns. I'd be happy to talk to other LU members more about these issues, so feel free to contact me. You can get me on kathy.jackson@hsuvic.asn.au

I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Yours in unity,

Kathy Jackson


Game on.