Labor administrative committee launches ‘branch-stacking’ investigation, halts internal elections
The Victorian Labor committee suspended internal elections on Thursday night and launched further investigation in the branch-stacking scandal reported in October.
Fairfax Media reported that a number of pre-paid credit and gift cards were used to repay the debts of about hundreds of ALP members backed by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s political powerbase. The action continued for years but the committee banned the use of pre-paid credits in 2014, seeing that the anonymous cards were used to cover branch-stacking.
An earlier investigation found that the entire scam was linked to the plumbers union and to the loyal warlords close to Shorten and another federal frontbencher, Stephen Conroy. The committee has again asked to launch an investigation into the scandal, reported The Age .
As far as the suspension of internal elections is concerned, the administrative committee has put a halt on elections for the Labor state conference, its country executive, Rainbow Labor and women’s network until February 2016. The Victorian party has appointed Labor Right member Garth Head and the Left’s member Liz Beattie to examine the use of pre-paid gift cards.
Branch stacking is a process that helps groups within a party to manage votes from large blocs and manipulate genuine federal and state preselections. In August, the ABC reported that the Labor party sacked 27-year-old Haykel Handal after he was suspected of being involved in the use of prepaid credit cards for branch stacking.
Prepaid cards do not have any identification clues on them and are bought and used anonymously. Party insiders ABC sources suspect there around 500 memberships as a result of branch stacking, including one senior party member.
Eighteen suspected memberships under the new investigation belong to Shorten’s Maribyrnong seat. “The ALP takes the integrity of its membership very seriously and will investigate the issues raised thoroughly,” Victorian Labor assistant state secretary Kosmos Samaras said.
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