The South Australian Labor Party is scrambling to respond to a legal threat made by a Labor scion over “oppressive, antidemocratic and inconsistent” campaigning guidelines for hopefuls vying for federal preselection.
Alice Dawkins, 27, the daughter of former Keating government treasurer and senior minister John Dawkins, works for a consulting firm specialising in Asia strategy after a stint working for Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation, and is contesting the soon-to-be vacated federal seat of Spence.
On June 21, her lawyer, Greg Griffin, sent a letter to SA Labor secretary Reggie Martin threatening to take matters to the Supreme Court unless the state branch responded to concerns about the preselection guidelines by Tuesday afternoon.
The guidelines — which are provided only after candidates have nominated and in a short window before ballots are sent out — include a ban on doorknocking, mailing or emailing voters using addresses provided by the party, and may sidestep the state’s quotas for women in Parliament.
Dawkins has since given the party more time to respond as campaigning for nomination begins; the party’s roll of preselectors was given to candidates on Tuesday and the deadline for ballots to be sent out is Friday.
Griffin’s letter says Dawkins and other candidates were given access to a document outlining compulsory guidelines for preselection only after they had nominated.
“It is incorrect to assert that Ms Dawkins or for that matter any member nominating for preselection can properly be said to have agreed to a decision of the state executive of which she was not aware … until after she paid her $1000 nomination fee and which should have been provided to her before she signed the nomination form and not after,” it said.
Griffin also takes exception to the guidelines. He wrote: “Putting aside that issue, the guidelines themselves appear oppressive, antidemocratic, and inconsistent with the stated objectives of the ALP of encouraging rank and file participation in the preselection of candidates.”
SA Labor’s internal campaigning guidelines, as seen by Crikey, identify phone calls and text messages as acceptable forms of campaigning between the hours of 10am and 8pm.
The document explicitly prohibits doorknocking, mail-outs or emailing using the party roll — a rule which gives “an unfair, unwarranted and impermissible advantage to select candidates”, Griffin says.
The letter also claims the seat’s preselection process will skirt federal and state affirmative action rules that require 45% of Labor seats to be held by women. It criticises the decision to leave just three days between rolls and ballots being sent out, arguing that it gives candidates just three days to campaign.
Spence, considered a safe Labor seat, has been held by Nick Champion since it was created in 2019. Champion is expected to move into state politics after the next election.
Dawkins will face stiff opposition from Transport Workers’ Union senior branch official Matt Burnell who’s also seeking preselection.
Sheesh. This is why political parties need to be outlawed. They’re like seagulls fighting over a hot chip. For parliament to be decided, have a lottery for a parliamentary position where a member’s base wage (i.e. a backbencher) is the equivalent of the average Aussie working wage. The incentive there being to implement policies and programs to increase the ordinary person’s wages. This way, there’s no campaigning, no political advertising, no donations, no pre-selection, no political funding from the AEC.
The reason politicians’ pay has just growed like Topsy is that they were sold as having so exhausted themselves in service to the Nation and the Common Weal as to be unable to resume normal work in their trade.
Given that few, if any, of the current infestations in state & federal parliaments have ever done anything in the real world, the issue would seem moot.
Let’s see how they’d do on the open job market.
John Dawkins. The man who gave us back HECS.
Just like his Dickensian namesake, Jack ‘the Artless Dodger’ Dawkins picked many a pocket or ten as PJK’s Treasurer.
They got the treasure, we got the empty pockets.
A Minderoo employee- not someone I would want any where near SA politics. Clearly the right wing is the only wing flapping in Australian politics at present, which is why we keep lurching further & further in that direction.
A bit harsh. It’s a very big assumption that anyone employed by an organisation must share the political or philosophical outlook of those that run the organisation. And Dawkins is not an employee of Minderoo – she left some time ago. Perhaps she found she did not much like Forrest’s style; who knows?
I hope that is why she left. I would never work for an organisation connected to Forrest. Some simple research is all it takes to see through Minderoo.
Interesting- at the same time the SA Liberals are trying to stop a takeover from the evangelical far right. SA election time will be interesting indeed.
This happens all the time in the ALP: if you’re a hardworking, but factionally independent (or a “wrong” faction) party member, your chances of being selected for ANYTHING, from local branch Secretary, through to delegate or candidate, is buckley’s and none. Capability, knowledge, personality, intelligence, experience – none of it matters. Unless you’re in with the Left or the Right, or one of the big unions, you’re not getting anything.
There was a time when the local branch decided who they wanted their local candidate to be. Back then you got good, hardworking people who already had a local profile because they were volunteers at schools, sporting and service clubs. People knew and respected them and they became the sort of MP who was more focussed on getting things done for their local community than looking after their own career trajectory. They are few and far between these days.
Once factions started controlling things, this local decision-making power was eroded to only a 50% say, then further down to 25%. Now, for all practical purposes, it’s 0%.
Dawkins has had oodles of life experience for someone still only in her 20s. She is whip smart and photogenic – personally I think she should run as an Independent and bugger the undemocratic ALP.
I’m a bit surprised that Dawkins would even want to be a member of this club even if they would have her. She’d be more useful to, and be better regarded by all her constituents as an independent.