When I was a kid, I had a kaleidoscope that provided endless fascination as patterns formed and reformed. Watching the power structures in the Labor party is a lot like watching patterns in a kaleidoscope – the dial shifts a couple of degrees and all of sudden you are looking at something else.



At its simplest level, what’s happening in the Victorian ALP right now is one of those kaleidoscopic shifts, except it’s not hypnotic, gentle and mildly mesmerising, but brutal and highly disruptive. As one insider characterised the fracas on Thursday: “This is Bill’s brilliant strategy for keeping Malcolm Turnbull in the Lodge.”

To understand what’s going on, we need to keep it simple, and we need to begin at the beginning.

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To maintain balance and harmony between the factions in Victoria there has been a stability pact in place for many years – a deal drawn up by the former Labor right faction powerbroker Steven Conroy with Bill Shorten, and the veteran Kim Carr’s socialist left faction.

The Conroy/Shorten/Carr deal mapped out a plan for state and federal preselections up to 2022, and covered agreements on internal party positions. But in politics, even arrangements brokered to keep the peace and share the spoils create losers, and some people felt aggrieved and undervalued by the status quo.

So now, a realignment. A breakaway group wants to tear up the old stability pact and replace it with a three-page agreement between centre unity (which is the right) and the industrial left (which includes the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union construction division; the Finance Sector Union; the Rail, Tram and Bus Union; and possibly, the Health and Community Services Union).

According to the draft I’ve seen, after a stirring preamble about the proposed alliance being “based on respect for ideas and passions, on policy and solidarity, and on creating strong foundations that allow for a dynamic and diverse organisation” (yes, do try not to laugh) the document gets down to the transactional business.

It commits the new group to cooperation in all Victorian Labor party forums, such as its state conference (including elections at the conference), and on internal party committees. It also commits the group to supporting its right and left factions on Labor’s national executive “to ensure state proportional representation is achieved by both groups”.

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The deal allows the factional blocs to “caucus separately in relation to all state ALP forums and policy” and to confer and share their respective positions on such matters prior to any formal ALP votes. “Nothing in this clause will prevent the CU (Centre Unity) and IL (Industrial Left) from agreeing to a single position on any matters described above.”

I realise this is completely eye-glazing to anyone outside the ALP, but inside the Victorian party, the rebellion is explosive.

The first point to make is that the new deal freezes out Carr, who has been a staunch supporter of Shorten’s to the point where he was shunned by his own faction at the national level. Other members of the Victorian left are also pointblank refusing to sign up to the rebellion because, to put it politely, they have significant reservations about the people spearheading it.

To describe people in the Victorian ALP as agitated and infuriated would be an understatement. But bruised feelings in politics are neither here nor there. It’s a tough business and everyone on the losing side of a transaction has once put someone else to the sword.

What matters if you are the leader of the federal Labor party is when internal power balances are sufficiently disturbed to threaten your own position. Turning allies into enemies is a risky roll of the dice, particularly at a time when you have already irritated the New South Wales right by demanding that Sam Dastyari, a significant figure institutionally, pack his bags.

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Party leaders are also supposed to be above such pettiness. If you are not above it, if you are in fact rolling around in factional muck like you’ve never left young Labor, then people will question your judgment. Leaders (as opposed to backroom kingmakers) face utterly reasonable questions, such as: who are you doing deals with, and why are you doing deals at all?

So where does Shorten line up in all of this?

Multiple Labor sources from both sides of the factional fence say the federal Labor leader has been supportive of the rebellion, despite the fact that it rips up his own stability pact. He has met the key protagonists, and some insiders say he has been lobbying personally and through proxies to get elements of the Victorian right to sign on.

Some contend the Victorian gambit is in part about ensuring a measure of control at the ALP national conference due in July, given that the right, Shorten’s faction, no longer dominates that forum numerically, ending a hegemony which has prevailed since the 1980s – and the right is split in any case.

I reported on Wednesday that the Victorian right faction had met to consider the proposed realignment, and deferred a decision about whether to sign on until the new year. Key right-aligned trade unions aren’t convinced the shift is a good idea, and given internal tensions, several small blocs on the right don’t want to sign on unless the entire faction is on board.

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Several Labor sources have told me a subsequent meeting took place where the Victorian right frontbencher Richard Marles and the Australian Workers’ Union state secretary, Ben Davis, met with representatives of the breakaway left group. The AWU is, of course, part of Shorten’s institutional power base, given he’s a former national secretary of the union.

The story goes that during subsequent meeting two rightwingers – a couple of controversial characters, Adem Somyurek, who is positioning to assert himself as the key kingmaker in the Victorian right, and Kimberley Kitching, the Labor senator who is close to Shorten – tried to persuade Marles and Davis to sign up, invoking the leader’s imprimatur. At the time of writing, the document remains unsigned.

A number of people within Labor are asserting that Shorten has been integrally involved in the boilover, both personally and through proxies, but others portray his role as more misadventure and foolishness than mastermind.

People close to him insist he would never agree to a deal which would upend preselection agreements and declare open season on sitting federal Labor MPs, because to do that would be to invite his own demise. Reason is invoked as the principle reason why this wouldn’t happen but, sadly, we all know reason can be an overrated quality in contemporary political life.

In any case, there are concerted efforts under way to hose down the idea of Shorten’s direct involvement in the breakout, and there is a lot of effort going on in both the right and the left to make sure no one signs the document now in circulation.

But even if the current crisis is averted, significant damage has already been inflicted.

The history of the Labor party tells you people have long memories, and there is always another twist in the kaleidoscope.