Victorian Labor will this weekend debate a resolution shifting the date of Australia Day to 9 May in a precursor to a conversation expected at the party’s national conference in July.



Party sources have confirmed there is discussion behind the scenes about drafting an Australia Day motion for the ALP national conference on the basis that 26 January is, as the Victorian resolution notes, “offensive to Indigenous people”.

The Victorian conference will also, as Guardian Australia revealed on Wednesday, debate an urgency motion calling for an end to offshore immigration detention and the transfer of all remaining asylum seekers to the Australian mainland within 90 days – which again front runs a national refugee policy debate in July.

The looming Victorian push follows a decision by the new Labor MP Ged Kearney to use her first speech to parliament to promise to campaign internally for a more humane policy on refugees.

Kearney – who held out the Greens in a byelection in the Melbourne seat of Batman – told parliament this week that Australia could afford to take more refugees but it could not afford “the ongoing cost to our national psyche” of subjecting asylum seekers to “shameful” indefinite detention in offshore immigration centres.

Her comments were backed on Wednesday night by the New South Wales Labor leftwing frontbencher Linda Burney, who told Sky News “there needs to be a time limit” on how long people were held in offshore immigration detention.

Burney said options were being worked on ahead of the national conference debate to ensure there could be an end to indefinite detention.

It is still unclear what specific motions on refugee policy will be brought to the July national conference because the process of selecting delegates is not yet complete. Party sources say the agitation centres around offshore detention becoming de facto indefinite detention because of the lack of viable resettlement options.

Some favour setting time limits on how long people can be kept in offshore detention. Some Labor figures are also keen to ensure that the Labor platform contains a commitment to ensure the UNHCR is funded sufficiently to enable a viable regional approach to resettlement, and to boost the community sponsorship of refugees above and beyond the humanitarian quota.

On the Australia Day debate in Victoria, a draft resolution circulating ahead of the weekend gathering says: “The state conference resolves that the date of Australia Day be moved as the date of 26 January 1788 is offensive to Indigenous people.

“The state conference notes that 9 May could be an alternative date of national celebration as 9 May 1901 marks the date of the first meeting of the Commonwealth parliament, the day upon which Australia became a self-governing and independent commonwealth; and the date is associated with the inauguration of the commonwealth on 1 January 1900 whereupon Australia became an independent democratic nation.”

The federal Labor leader, Bill Shorten, has empathised with the concerns of Indigenous people about 26 January but has made it clear he does not support changing the date.

The Victorian conference will also debate a motion moved by the CFMEU state secretary, John Setka, attempting to mandate that political staffers be members of trade unions, and give a proportion of their salary to the ALP.

The preamble to the Setka motion says “conference notes with concern that there are currently ministerial offices that harbour advisers with deeply anti-union sentiments, some who have a history of anti-union actions”.

“To guard against this, it is essential that Labor government ministerial staff are, at the same time, members of their relevant union as well as the Labor party, and that all of those staff contribute their tithe to the Labor party.”

The draft motion says in addition to membership of their relevant union and the Labor party, “conference notes the payment of tithes directly contribute to our collective re-election effort”.

“Conference notes that were all ministerial staff to pay their tithe, this would dramatically increase Labor’s ability to run marginal seat campaigns that are urgently required to ensure a second term for the Andrews government.

“The payment of tithes by ministerial staff at both state and federal levels has been an important factor in previous state and federal Labor government’s funding marginal seat campaigns.”

The preamble to the Setka motion says “without serious efforts being made by the party as a whole, the ministerial stratum of the party can become populated with a disproportionate percentage of policy professionals who do not hold core Labor values.

“The logical corollary of this is that Labor in government will shift away from its core values and fail to deliver public policy that, at its core, prioritises the protection and support of the most vulnerable in our society.”

The motion itself calls for the premier “to direct all Labor ministers to audit the organisation of their ministerial offices in order to assess the number of ministerial advisors who are members of both their union and the Labor party as well as establish how many of their ministerial staff are currently paying their tithe to the party”.