Right reinforced in Qld ALP

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE -- The right's stranglehold on the Queensland branch of the Labor Party was strengthened at the party's triennial state conference during the week June 27 to July 1.

The dominance of the right was underlined at the start of the conference when long-serving state president Ian McLean was dumped in favour of tourism minister Bob Gibbs.

Socialist Left member McLean had held his position for ten years as part of the power-sharing deal which had maintained a state of relative factional peace within the state branch.

Gibbs, also a member of the SL, is a stooge of the right and the Goss government; his election with right-wing and some left union backing has formalised a cold split within the SL in Queensland.

Gibbs, who won by 223 votes to 106, received only 33 of the left's 139 votes, but profited from support by the right's Australian Workers Union and Labor Unity factions.

While McLean had hardly raised a peep against the Goss government, a few mild public criticisms recently were enough to raise the ire of the government and party machine.

The dumping of McLean emphasises the Goss government's increasing arrogance and intolerance of the slightest dissent in the party's ranks.

The rest of the state conference underlined the determination of the party's power brokers to marginalise opposition to its conservative policies.

Debate on controversial social issues was shunted to the last day to reduce the potential for disruption of the celebration of the Queensland ALP as the “natural party of government” in this state.

Despite resolutions calling for the decriminalisation of abortion and marijuana use and for a review of Queensland's draconian prostitution laws, a senior government source was quoted here conceding it was “highly unlikely” any such changes would take place.

The fallout from the right's power-grab is still to be felt. But already the United Mineworkers Union has threatened to consider disaffiliation again, after only recently renewing its membership of the state ALP following two years outside the fold.

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