The last-minute vote to defer them to Labor’s administrate committee was likened to "student politics" by Special Minister of State Gavin Jennings. "The disappointing thing is there was a strange alliance of people who actually decided rather than to deal with important issues ... they’d rather go home," he told reporters, citing an earlier controversy over a series of proposed changes to the way the Victorian Labor Party worked. "It was a bit of young Labor, a bit of student politics we saw today," he said. But CFMEU state secretary John Setka, who voted in favour of the deferrals, said it was "democracy at work". Among the motions passed were calls for an audit of how many ministerial staff were ALP and union members and demands for greater protection against assaults on transport workers.

Earlier in the day, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten sought to fire up Labor’s trade union base in a speech to the party faithful that portrayed Australia as an increasingly economically-divided society after five years of Coalition government. Mr Shorten said Labor was ready to take on the Turnbull government at the 'super Saturday' of five federal byelections across Australia on July 28, scheduled to clash with the national Labor conference. Mr Shorten blasted the timing of the byelections, which has forced Labor to reschedule its national conference but said ‘‘our business now is byelections’’. In a room at the Moonee Valley racecourse with up to 700 Labor members present, hundreds of whom wore trade union-branded clothing, Mr Shorten argued that ordinary Australian workers had missed out on recent economic growth because of the Abbott and Turnbull governments' attempts to weaken unions. “The reason why this government is so obsessed with trade unions is they understand that when you have relentless attacks on unions, you actually see lower wage outcomes for working Australians and the last five years most certainly proves that point,” Mr Shorten said.

“We now live in a country where if you have a lot of physical assets, a lot of property, a lot of wealth, you’re doing very well. “But if you are someone who relies on your pay-as-you-go income of your job, you are doing worse.” Loading He reiterated Labor’s opposition to tax cuts for higher-income earners contained in this month’s federal budget and said the opposition would take a tax-relief package targeted at working-class and middle-class voters to the election. The first motion of the Labor state conference on Sunday saw ministerial staff in the Andrews government pushed to join the Labor Party and their union, to prevent the influence of “anti-union sentiments” within government.

The urgency motion received rousing support after being moved by Mr Setka. Labor members at the conference endorsed a motion to audit the offices of ministers in the Andrews government, to find out how many staff are not members of a union, who are not ALP members or who are not paying their ALP membership tithe. The Andrews government was also given a slap by its membership base for its current plan to privatise Victoria’s Land Titles Office, for an estimated $2 billion. The plan was overwhelmingly rejected at conference, though the urgency motion does not bind the Victorian government to adopt it. On offshore detention, Mr Shorten said "a Labor government will stop the boats".

"I'm very committed to making sure the boats don't start again, we also just happen to think that we shouldn't have kept people in semi-indefinite detention for five years." With AAP Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video