Lawyers at 10 paces as Labor’s hunting season turns nasty and nastier

They call it “hunting season” in radical circles: when you turn on the most extreme part of your movement and wipe it out.

In the Zionist uprising of the 1940s, the Palmach did it to the Stern Gang, the fascist-Zionists waging terror against the British; the IRA wiped out the upstart Irish People’s Liberation Organisation in a single murderous night in 1992.

Fun times.

And we’re getting a dose of it here, with Labor’s momentous factional realignments. There are no guns yet, just hired guns in the form of lawyers, but we live in hope of a shoot-out in the Inn of Celestial Happiness BYO as the crayfish watch from their tanks. With lawsuits, job pushes and internal struggles, the hunted are fighting back, and it may get very ugly. I mean Richo-level ugly.

Hunting season began some time ago, when upstart factional leader Adem Somyurek had his office video bugged — with as someone noted military-grade equipment — and alleged Victorian branch stacking operations laid bare. Mr Somyurek has denied all wrongdoing and late last year used parliamentary privilege to accuse the media and others in Labor of wrongdoing.

Regardless, Somyurek had become a major pain for the legacy factions and their leaders, turning a group of non-Anglo SDA (Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, the Shoppies) faction renegades (the “mods”) into one capable of dictating terms to the big boys. A big get was to persuade Bill Shorten’s AWU faction in (along with some small unions run by his cronies) after the Shorten-Conroy alliance, badged as Labor Unity, broke up. The next step was an alliance with the new industrial left faction led by the CFMEU, breaking away from Kim Carr’s socialist left.

The grand prize was to bring the SDA back in as subservient partner. Whether that was ever going to happen is hard to say, but the Age/Nine tapes blew up the mods, the larger centre alliance, and the centre alliance-industrial left deal, through which Somyurek, a suburban MLC, hoped to rule the ALP. Incredible, really. It’s like Aguirre, the Wrath of God, set in Springvale.

So now the hunt continues, the prize being the destruction of Shorten and the “Shorts” once and for all. Shorten should have gone to Richo’s Chinese restaurant after the 2019 loss, a campaign which saw the public’s lack of warmth to him turn into focused dislike over the course of a few weeks. His decision to stay and serve his party dutifully in whatever capacity etc was taken by all as a sign that he hadn’t given up, and would try to come back after a 2021-22 Albanese loss, and put together enough of a faction — without Somyurek, but maybe with the SDA — to push his way back in.

That promised years of instability over preselections and branches, even before the Victorian ALP’s self-governing powers were suspended. Central to rebuilding would have been a branch-by-branch struggle with the Conroyites, now led by Richard Marles (Conroy having retired to the gaming industry lobby to fight for a better world from over there), a nightmare prospect. The suspension of Victoria’s powers knocked that on the head, and that may have been its main purpose.

The new grand alliance, in which the socialist left, the NSW left, the Conroyite right and the SDA have all jumped into bed tog- … ugh no I can’t finish that metaphor, has only one unifying principle: if they can exclude Shorten and some small union bases around him — the plumbers, the HWU — they hope they will wither on the vine and blow away and a brief stability can be achieved.

But the rebel forces are fighting back. The rather bedraggled Shorts — torn Shorts? — led the legal attack as 11 unions clubbed together to sue the party apparatus to try to open preselection in the new, and safe, federal seat of Hawke, a juicy prize. Diana Asmar, head of the HWU, is the official plaintiff, and the campaign was quickly given a feminist branding against the preferred candidate for Hawke, Sam Rae.

Simultaneously, Somyurek’s lieutenant, Marlene Kairouz, launched suit to try to restrain the party from hearing disciplinary charges against her following from the branch stack investigation. If both suits were to succeed what can only be described as the “spare parts” faction would be back in business.

Now a third flank has been opened with an Age report that state secretary Clare Burns has declared her intention to return to the post in September after a year or so’s maternity leave. Burns, the former failed candidate for the state seat of Northcote, had started in the SDA orbit, but was a part of Somyurek’s outfit when she gained the state secretary’s position on Somyurek’s insistence. Somyurek’s power then collapsed, and Burns was left somewhat isolated, the Andrews’ government’s glee at being free of his meddlesome influence unconfined.

Now they have a problem on their hands. They’re desperate to prevent Burns’ return to the job — but edging out a woman while on maternity leave is not a good look for the party of gender diverse pedestrian walk signs. The gender card is being played again. This will roll on as the two court cases play out. If they can win they crack the ALP open in a situation where the party could decompose into 10 or 12 mini-factions.

You can see why the party centre has decided on a hunting season. And thank god there’s no chance of a snap election, like, tomorrow. See you at Richo’s Chinese restaurant!