Will Brunswick get in the van? Crikey hears that with Brunswick MLA Jane Garrett about to announce her candidacy for Lord Mayor of Melbourne, there’s a move to persuade playwright, Guardian columnist and activist Van Badham to stand for the seat. The move would come from inside the Industrial Left (IL) faction, grouped around the CFMEU (Vic) and RTBU (Vic). Badham’s been a vocal supporter of the CFMEU’s industrial deaths campaign, and is frequently retweeted by CFMEU head John Setka — including footage of a Badham karaoke number at a fundraiser, which, well … dare to struggle.
Brunswick is firmly controlled by the Socialist Left (SL), against which the Industrial Left is now aligned. Sources in both camps told Crikey there was a move on to persuade Badham — a former National Union of Students politician out of Wollongong, before she became a writer — to stand. The current sole candidate for preselection – which will happen on March 18, the day after the Batman byelection — is Cindy Louise O’Connor, an organiser with the metalworkers’ union (AMWU), and is SL aligned.
The push for Badham would be based on one thing: if Jane Garrett quits early, Labor will need a miracle to hold the seat. As with Ged Kearney in Batman — an SL figure taking a seat dished out to the Right, after the stonking defeat of a Right candidate in Northcote — the uphill Van push would be on the grounds that only such a figure could win it. Badham would be the ideal candidate for a hail-mary pass. She’s forceful, a top-rate speaker, has a high-profile and culture-hero status from her Guardian column. Also, she’s a self-styled anarcho-syndicalist-libertarian-communist, and that would go down great on Sydney Road, the anarchists’ last redoubt.
She’s also, in recent times, been an unabashed supporter of the Labor Right, going out of her way to defend David Feeney, Michael Danby — and ersatz anarcho-syndicalist-company union, the SDA. That looked like extreme solidarity and forbearance. Given the hopes of the IL locking in an alliance with the Right, including the SDA, and surrounding the Socialist Left — it is, well, let’s just say, extremely helpful to a Badham vanguard push. (Badham was contacted by email for comment on this article).
Will Brunswick get in the van, when the van finally comes for Jane Garrett (to move her office stuff to town hall, of course)? We shall find out …
I seek your forgiveness in advance, but this piece is yet more evidence of how Melbourne-Left-centric Crikey has become. Seriously, who in the rest of Australia gives a shit about who is running in Brunswick?
Don’t get me wrong. I do like Brunswick. Bonfire Restaurant has the best nihari and you can sometimes pick up cheap books at Savers. The public pool is fantastic, as is the library across the road. But I can’t imagine a Sydney news website going on about which minor party is running for a seat in Macdonaldtown or Glebe.
I suspect the relevance for a wider audience may hinge on the likely impact of these machinations on factional support for that bloke Bill in Canberra.
Didn’t a relatively recent article of yours address the Conservatives and Greens campaigns in a north sydney by-election?
You mean the Bennelong federal one involving the former Premier of NSW (now a Senator) and the sitting member who lost his seat thanks to a constitutional challenge in a seat former PM John Howard lost in 1996?
Actually, if all this has an impact on Batman, it may be important. In which case I withdraw my initial objection.
It looks like extreme looniness. Or else it was all part of a nudge-nudge-wink-wink deal. For this alone (and there’s plenty more) she deserves to be slaughtered by the Greens (her spurned lover). It also confirms how and why the so-called Centre-Left is losing everywhere all over the world. If they do these sort of contortions …
This surprised me too – I’ve seen her as a shrill, self-righteous ultra-leftist. Connecting with Mr & Mrs Middle of the Road might be her weak point.
I don’t know how likely this is, but I do know what a terrible idea it would be.
You forgot to mention how much Badham loathes the Greens. I was blocked by her on Twitter simply for daring to mention that while Ged Kearney is an excellent candidate for Batman it’s a shame that Ged’s swallowed her principled position on refugees in order to join team Labor.
Apart from her being a vapid, astonishingly ill informed attention seeker with latte in her veins, her paeans to Danby & Feeney should be terminal for her ascendancy.
If not, it shows what Labor has become with gumBoil Shlernt fighting for dominance in the op-shop against that swarm of homeless moths.