The OC Investigations Unit (Wild West Patriots) reports:
The Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter is muscling in on his party's preselections with ten hand-picked candidates, including his Chief of Staff, Rita Saffoti.
We are told that he has not consulted with heads of the various factions and sub-factions about the composition of the Carps 10. (The Left is riddled with micro-sub-factions centred around large unions, with the Right now more united due to one sub-faction successfully setting fire to its rivals)
We understand that Saffoti and Carpenter have made it known to senior party figures that if there is any internal resistance to the Carps 10 that the Premier's office will just announce who the candidates are and leave it up to others whether they wish to publicly repudiate the Party Leader and Premier of the state in the lead-up to a close-fought election.
Naturally, not many are inclined to take him on.
PRESELECTION PROCESS DISCARDED
It's an ugly technique but one that the OC believes will become more and more common in coming years (especially if the Ruddster has anything to do with it) due to the largely discredited preselection processes of Australian political parties. Memberships are shrinking, new applicants for membership are greeted with all the same welcome afforded cockroaches,
The chainsaw massacre led by Carpenter and his centre faction colleague state Treasurer Eric the Ripper will see a number of forced departures. Indeed, one of the youngest MPs in the state Jaye Radisich looks like retiring at the grand old age of thirty-one. (She was elected when she was twenty-six if you don't mind) It is said that Saffoti will probably replace her.
A major redistribution has given Carpenter and Ripper the excuse to make very many changes. There has been public speculation about one possible candidate, a former footballer. But the others have not been made known.
RADICAL REFORM NEEDED
We'll report in with more names as things unfold, but it looks like the main winner from this saga is Carpenter. And the biggest loser is any pretence that there's a properly functioning preselection process inside Australia's oldest political party.
Until substantial changes are made to that process to restore confidence in it, we'll see more efforts like the Carps 10, with party leaders personally selecting candidates (invariably involving their chiefs of staff, no offence meant, Tim Pallas), giving people even more reasons not to join political parties, which remain complicated to join, expensive, exclusive and often with branches engaged in the most obscure procedural madness or endless discussions of trivia.
Carpenter is trying to establish his dominance over his caucus. But the real long term impact of his recent maneuvers is to highlight the need for a change to a process the public can have faith in. If you don't open up the selection of candidates in a system of primaries (modified with Australian characteristics), you'll end up with a new system where the Party leader can veto candidates, even axe incumbent MPs and select new ones from their Rolodex without any real limit on their power.
Game on
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