Well, life comes at you pretty fast in the Victorian ALP. Also, another substance, once it hits the fan.
Last week Adem Somyurek was on track to control a big chunk of the federal Labor Party and most of Victoria. This week, he’s out of the party, and the two lieutenants in his mini-faction — Robin Scott (MLA for Preston) and Marlene Kairouz (MLA for Kororoit) — are out of the ministry (and, I would imagine, under threat as preselections are spilled).
Fifty years after the federal party intervened in the Victorian branch to prevent the Socialist Left from opposing state funding for private and church schools, Socialist Left Victorian premier Dan Andrews has invited the federal party in to take over management from the state executive.
The symmetry is near-perfect, because it was the school funding stoush that pretty much brought the modern Labor faction system into being, stabilising two or three big groups, a Left and a Right, with their own caucuses, issues pre-decided before they hit the full party level.
It’s because of the most recent fragmenting of this that Adem Somyurek, an outer-suburban, Upper House member with no strong union background, was able to build a faction out of almost nothing.
It’s also why he could be so effectively set up and nobbled — his Mods squad had even less of a union/movement base than the mini-factions run by Shorten and Conroy, et al, that emerged in the 1990s.
Someone wanted Adem Somyurek decommissioned very, very badly, and whoever did it (as we noted in Tips and Murmurs yesterday) had access to surveillance with a clarity good enough to record a Steely Dan album.
Somyurek succeeded first because there was an extreme vacuum on the party’s right in Victoria. It had been unstable since the Shoppies and three other DLP unions had been readmitted to the ALP in 1985.
The right that had remained inside the party was pragmatic. The SDA was Catholic, socially ideological, anti-communist, pro-US. It began to amass power as the mainstream right began to fracture, as union membership began to fall, unions ceased to be a focus of working-class life, and that class was itself decomposed by the destruction of Australian manufacturing.
By the ’90s, the practice of importing student politicians into official union positions to run factional politics had the effect of creating sub-factions run by David Feeney (SDA), Stephen Conroy (Transport Workers) and Bill Shorten (AWU).
Feeney proved so successful at winning friends and influencing people that fellow party members put a fake death notice in the paper for him when he was ousted from the Steve Bracks machine in the 2000s.
That left Shorten and Conroy to create an alliance of their two sub-factions — based around student friendships, traded favours and people knowing where some metaphorical bodies were buried — the Short-Cons (how these Goodfellas tragics loved that nickname!).
Feeney would return to the Victorian SDA, but the old ideological strand of the faction (overwhelmingly Irish- and Italian-Australian) became so rigid they were nicknamed the “Taliban”. The SDA had become a home for ethnic-community supported candidates, backed by Turks, Lebanese and others — suburban-conservative, but less ideological.
They were excluded from power for that, both ideologically and for sheer clannishness, and Somyurek — initially a staffer in SDA-aligned MP Anthony Byrne’s office — was the leader in creating an internal sub-faction known as the Mods (or Moderates).
Quite possibly it would have stayed with the SDA, had it been given a slice of the action, but old-school Catholic, anti-Muslim chauvinism pretty much prevented the old guard from seeing this.
Somyurek and the Mods were offered a chance to grow their mum ‘n’ dad state faction when the Short-Cons came apart spectacularly, as mutual suspicion between the two groups as to who would double-cross first brought on a double cross and the AWU undermined the Conroy group (it’s too complicated for this article).
Conroy got his revenge in magnificent fashion, announcing his retirement from politics while Shorten was on an overseas trip — pretty much at the actual moment Billy Bob was flying over the Canadian tundra, thousands of kilometres from a phone.
The scramble to realign favoured Somyurek and his Mods for one big reason: the relative unity of ethnic groups such as Turkish-Australians, Lebanese-Australians, and now Indian-Australians, and the ability of leaders to “deliver” them in taking over branches.
The Turks had already got up John “Butterdish” Eren in Lara (having helped his boss Richard Marles to take Corio from a sitting member in 2007). Now Adem Somyurek came towards Spring Street, up Mulgrave Freeway like the Seljuks swooping out of central Asia towards Constantinople in the 1200s.
The advantage? As unions have withered as genuine workers’ community organisations, the close communal links of “ethnic” groups have remained. As Somyurek said on “those” tapes, “Anglos don’t stick around”. Non-Anglos from more traditional cultures will, out of collective being.
Once you stack a branch with Turks or Indians, it stays stacked. They’re the Marie Kondos of party subversion.
Somyurek had caught the rest of the Labor right napping, and they scrambled to react, as the Sultan of Springvale began his head-scything charge across the Melbourne suburbs, taking branch after branch.
But Somyurek had relied on simply taking over the remnants of Conroy’s branch operation as its power declined — Somyurek’s reentry to state Cabinet was complemented by the rolling of Conroy loyalists Johnny Butterdish and Philip Dalidakis, and Dalidakis is not an easy man to roll.
When the shattered remnants of the Conroy machine went with Albanese, Somyurek’s plan fell to pieces; hence his bitter barney involving the (alleged) traditional “Dance of the Butterknife”, with Johnny Eren in the dining room of Victoria’s Parliament House.
Somyurek’s loss of judgement may date from that point: he realised he would have to perform an old-school stack, with a complex array of small groups, and that would involve what has been caught on camera: paying for the memberships of people who have no interest in joining the party per se.
From the 60 Minutes tapes, Somyurek appears to have known that he was being surveilled, but did not suspect he was being filmed and taped in the Treasury Offices, as he ran the operation.
Still, by now, he had created a “Centre Unity” alliance with Shorten’s AWU, and that had given him the back channel to create a deal with the new CFMMEU-centred Industrial Left.
The ultimate aim was to draw the SDA in too, to a new superfaction, which could challenge the dominance of Kim Carr and the Socialist Left — and then dictate terms to the “National Left” headed by Albanese from NSW. The SDA never joined, the right realised it had created a monster, as Somyurek became megalomaniacal, and the rest will hopefully soon be available as a series of podcasts.
So what now?
The vacuum in part of the right leaves Shorten and the AWU with a chance to take control, or for the new UWU (the old NUW + United Voice) to stake a claim — a right union that acts like a left one; i.e. actually represents its members, and has strikes — but it also leaves scope for the Conroy forces to regroup.
Hence, one suspects, the formation of the pro-coal “Otis” group, by Conroyette Richard Marles. It’s an MPs policy group at this stage, but Marles and Co really have nothing else: no unions and no branches.
The pro-coal push is directly aimed at contesting the Socialist Left’s identification with renewables and a green new deal, and offering the faction and the party up to fossil fuels for support.
Cameron Milner, former Victorian colleague of both Shorten and Conroy, has been a coal lobbyist (for Shenhua) for a number of years after leaving the ALP (and returning to run Shorten’s 2016 campaign).
Somyurek still has sway from outside the party. To try and counter that, the Victorian rolls will be purged, it will come down to court fights, the stoush will burn through cash, and there will be biffo.
If it isn’t the occasion for a thorough reconstruction of the ALP, the party will come out of it worse than before, the long afterlife of once-stable factions continued into a new decade.
Cue the late Warren Zevon MLC (death is not a disqualifying condition from Victoria’s Upper House): send lawyers, guns and money, the party’s hit the fan.
The Christians, overseen by Matthias Corrman and two State upper house MPs in Nick Goiran and Peter Collier, are said to have the numbers in the WA Libs.
Join a church in the northern suburbs and and seems you’ll be joining the Liberal Party soon after.
After the drubbing at the last State election, where a few Christians lost their seats including Eric Abetz’s brother, there were a few old-school Libs prepared to speak out about the Christian influence.
Imagine you were a bright young person and thought you could offer the Liberal Party something and went to a branch meeting and met some of the right wing churchy mob.
Doubt you’d go to a second meeting.
Cool! Now I know why Somyurek was so comprehensively defenestrated. Thanks, Guy. What an awe inspiring hit-job this was.
Gough Whitlam broke the school funding veto for Catholic schools. That was the essence of the historic ALP opposition to State Aid, as it was known. He was not a member of any faction, and it is wrong to attribute that reform to the establishment of Left and Right factions.
Ross Mac you couldn’t be more wrong. The Evangelical Churches are EXACTLY where the LNP talent is heading, especially the branch-stacking backroom talent. That’s precisely where the next big wave of electoral harvesting is underway. That’s also why up here in Sydney even a glinty-eyed factional dalek-turd like Alex Hawke was happy to ditch his own Libs hard-right mob in favour of a Mods-ScoMo coup over the Cook branch members: he looked to the future of (ahem) ‘curated democracy’, that lay beckoning yonder out in Sydney’s aspirational Western ‘Burbs…saw ‘Trumpist Prosperity Gospel’ writ large. And saw that the numbers were good. The LNP are quietly hoovering up the new-faithful social conservative vote there (and I am sure in Melb, certainly in Qld). As a bloc, it’s young, easily-wielded, cashed-up, ordered, attentive, pre-administrated, e-literate and spread across many, many electorates while remaining centrally directed. (Man oh man, is it ever: every last serious political operative should go to a Hillsong or similar service – just to eyeball what you are up against). It’s the perfect branch-stack lego-bloc for the new below-the-radar, Data Analytics campaign era. And the next-gen Libs now harnessing it can scarcely believe the lack of serious political competition for it, so far. Up here it’s the Lib ‘Reformers’, growing in audacity. Berejiklian – like Andrews – runs a pretty good, sane, centrist government…so of course she’s on the chopper. Do not doubt for a second, Ross, that evangelical Christianity is the future engine room of Australian electoral politics. Aye, absurd, isn’t it! Mock it at your – IMO, at everyone’s – peril, man.
And why are the pickings so easy? Simple: because the poor little passive-aggressive* petals of contemporary ‘privileged progressivism’ (not just the ALP/Greens, but increasingly, Lib moderates and corporate world, too) are so hair-triggered by a word/concept like ‘God’ that they’d sooner just go ‘ewww’, and hand the LNP Prosperity Gospel Right every last voting Believer, than even bother trying to win them their way, with a slightly more secular/prog-moral version (in the old Jesuit social justice intellectual tradition, say, or Anglican missionary, or Judaic scholarly, or Islam community, etc, etc). Nope: instead they mostly direct their innate spiritual zealotry at just this brand of p*ssant factional-careerist narcissism (since these towering mediocrities invariably all reckon they’re the f**king messiah). Replete with its rainbow ‘cosplay’ (GR!!) pantomine, and associated fanatical careerist-policing of each other’s rainbow liturgies. It is all now, indeed, so ‘Death of Stalin’ that it makes you weep with laughter: by far the choicest aspect of the last few unfunny days was the Pasha of Prahran’s pants-sh*ttingly hilarious faux-outrage, as expressed in his mournful PR…at his own appalling, non-PC language. Appalling, I tells myself!!
Really. It’s way past time that the soft-pap-prog Teh Left (of the ALP, at least) stopped patronising the entire electorate with this transparently bolted-on ‘rainbow and unicorn farts’ conspicuous correctitude. Because they are, increasingly, abandoning the winnable political field, thanks to it. People just don’t buy it…for very good reason, as revealed by Somyurek: it’s careerist role-play that none of them buy themselves, either.
An acute, prescient joined-up series this turned out to be. No need for envy of Ch9, GR. They should give you first dibs on the ‘Blue Murder: Pasha of Prahran’ screenplay.
* Sure, the rest was odious, but he sure as sh*t got that bit right.
If what you say is true…about the young evangelicals taking over the country…how come those under 35 years voted overwhelmingly for the ALP/Greens at the last several federal elections?
At least that is what the professor from ANU who does the in-depth analysis of voting patterns after each federal election seems to be saying.
But did they, CML? Not out in the swing electorates that count they didn’t. Not in sufficient numbers at least. But the real point is to do with the branch-joining, door-knocking campaign foot-soldiery needed to convince the socially conservative Faithful across ALL demographics out there to vote ALP instead of Liberal. Most young progressive party activists (and smug ANU political professors for that matter) just laugh at religion, and outright ridicule the Hillsong brands.
Meanwhile, their young conservative counterparts – every bit as e-savvy, as Green, as multicultural, as down wi’ da rainbow cosplay stuff as them – are politely and respectfully and quietly drag-hauling every last churchy vote out of middle Australia, powered by the jesus prosperity gospel (or its cynical leveraging).
Like I said CML: the ALP will mock Hillsong at its peril. And the ‘touchy-wouchy PC-feelzzz rainbow’ malarkey DOES mock Hillsong, not because the sentiments and values it all symbolises are bad or wrong or undesirable. But because it’s so obviously (too often) counterfeit (a la Adem): a cynic’s imitation of the Jesus crew’s Kumbayah version opposing them which, while perhaps no less superficial, is at least genuinely believed in by its zealots (god help us). That makes it campaign-Koolaid-electorally powerful, whereas the ‘privileged progressive’ pap-prog version of Teh Left’s passive-aggressive Anglo wusses turns to tepid lemonade the moment the free wifi goes down or whatever. Again as Somyurek got right: ‘politically engaged’ Anglos – if they’re not ninety-five year old Vets of the Split or (natch)?self-important Chosen Ones like him – are petulant entitled tyre-kickers.
Or prove us wrong, Gen Z Labor! As Rundle says, perfect opportunity to re-invent.
Concerning how MPs, advisors and media round politics have far stronger attachment to Christianity, and less diversity, than mainstream society or the electorate; while personal ambition and power are now acceptable ends supported by libertarian ideology.
One needs to look at the long game being played with its roots in the US radical right libertarians, now represented by Kochs et al. with the manipulation or creation of coalitions of Christian nationalists, white nationalists, etc. and free market think tanks or ‘bill mills’ in addition to their well developed research, tactics and strategy; influencing or corrupting parties and bypassing parliamentary democracy with recent symptons being Brexit, Trump and what we see in Australia both federal and state levels.
Amongst others, the following US writers and/or researchers describe well what has happened in the USA and worse, the same players and strategies are apparent in Australia.
Chris Hedges (American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America), Katherine Stewart (The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism), Ian Haney-Lopez (Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class), Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right) and Nancy MacLean (Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America).
The libertarians have cleverly manipulated various factors (and factions) under various and seemingly unrelated public guises to bring about this change in politics; whatever it takes…..
Forgot to mention the obvious, diluting the basis of power of social democracy in both the community and Labor especially, by attacking and nobbling unions or related, constantly, allowing others to slip into the vacuum….
All true enough, Drew, at least in terms of how the only-cynically religious in the US have exploited Christianity to devastating electoral effect. (I predict Trump will win in November, despite how absurdly bad things look for him from here.)
The reason (he said only slightly exasperatedly) is contained between the lines of your comment. When you open blithely with…:
‘Concerning how MPs, advisors and media round politics have far stronger attachment to Christianity, and less diversity, than mainstream society or the electorate…’
…I think you demonstrate the point I was making well. Modern progressives have an instinctive resistance to (or disdain for) grasping the place of Faith in the electorate that is creating exactly the vacuum into which the only-cynically religious of the Prosperity Gospel Churches – political movements, not faiths – are flooding. There’s an ‘ickiness’ about God in modern secular progressivism – which, ironically enough, is a faith (in some cases a Faith), not a political movement – that is proving electorally fatal. Yes, fewer in ‘mainstream society or the electorate’ go to church, believe in God, observe religiosity explicitly etc in the sense you seem to define faith…but that falling away of the ‘old churchy ways’ and your assumption that means God is dying is precisely what’s leaving the door open to the jackboot-libertarian/jesus-fascist impostors to effect, in Australia, the chilling political take-over of the GOP described in those references you note. The god-fearing MAGA voters are decent…well, god-fearing people, left vulnerable to exploitation and ultimately enlistment by wolves in sheep’s clothing, by the abandonment/active mocking/simple inability to understand, respect and take seriously their religiosity by the politically progressive.
You really should go to a Hillsong service out at Norwest, Drew. The main 9 o’clocker of a Sunday, full house band, MTV production, light show and big screens with the sing-along lyrics, the Robbie Williams stadium ballads, the massed hands in the air. You’ll be gobsmacked: at how ethnically, demographically, gender, family and age diverse it is. And how unchurchy it is, how slickly it entwines prosperity, order, safety, meaning, community, celebrity, moral righteousness and…well, human love. And it is attracting Australian from right across ‘mainstream society and the electorate’ in droves, under largely LNP stewardship…even as the ALP/Teh Left neglects/sneers God further and further out of its ranks. Electoral suicide. Homicide too, if you again turn to America, and watch how the Koolaid Kristian Kult version that’s cuckholded the old world/sackcloth-puritanical US Faiths will send the MAGA cultists quite possibly to their literal sacrificial (Covid) deaths at the Tulsamberg Rally this Saturday.
Labor: get thine to Church!
“Most young progressive party activists (and smug ANU political professors for that matter) just laugh at religion, and outright ridicule the Hillsong brands.”
Citation or survey results, please. And do show where, in the analysis of voting patterns, that ANU professor CML mentioned is “smug”.
I can play this game, too. For example, I could claim that most progressive party activitists are concerned with real issues such as heatlh, education, environmental destruction and racism, and so couldn’t give a rat’s arse about religion that they don’t even talk about it, let alone deride those who do. Maybe they don’t take religious people’s faith seriously because they don’t take it at all, which means they probably aren’t insulting those folks anywhere near as much as you seem to think. (And, in another claim I base on personal experience and anecdote, those happy-clappies almost never shut up about their faith and the wonders of their god, even when it’s completely irrelevant to whatever’s going on in the room.)
I agree there’s a trend you identify that should be resisted by the left. The difference is I don’t feel the need to dress up my claims in long-winded, rapid-fire, stand-up comedy-speak and non-words like “pre-administrated”.
Hillsong and the updated Horizon have taken a corporate approach to religion. The formula is carefully monitored, saccharine smiles are pasted on and the congregation are screened for useful brand advantages, those that don’t suit the brand will feel left out.
The most important difference between this type of religion and some others is that it is OK to be a selfish lacking empathy knob head, financial success is proof God loves you, and the rest well they just don’t try hard enough.
That empirical righteous determination that Morrison carries has the support of most of the cashed up industries/corporations who are also impervious to any social or environmental issues that could affect profit margin.
It’s a match made in heaven, a marriage of convenience, they work hard and are formidable.
The dangerous part is that financial success is all, so entertaining thoughts of having enough or not needing more is just complacency and a wrecking ball to anything that stands in its way.
It doesn’t seem to matter that their approach bares little if any resemblance to the new testament.
Being part of a group, social animals, is integral to most humans sense of wellbeing, this can easily be exploited by religion and the Pentecostals
US and Them version is particularly sinister for the above reasons.
It would be great to see the Labor party cleaned up, they would then have a clear brand distinction to the coalition and could start to shed light on the government and their approach to process to gain support with less fecal matter sticking to their own party perhaps.
Man, was that a tour de force, or what?
My comment got in the way there sorry.