By Paul Oboohov
SYDNEY — The NSW ALP state conference, June 11-13, appears to have settled, for the moment, the battle between left and right factions over preselections for state parliament.
A casualty was right-winger Peter Anderson, former police minister and current member for the Sydney western suburbs seat of Liverpool. Paul Whelan, former attorney-general and sitting right-wing member for the seat of Ashfield, was also under threat but has been saved by the right-controlled Administrative Committee under a left-right deal.
The right blundered in the conference preselection ballot for the NSW upper house when three more ballot papers were cast than the number of eligible voting delegates, and the right-wing leader of the Opposition in the upper house, Ted Egan, was relegated to an unwinnable position.
This resulted unexpectedly from the right's manoeuvre to maximise its vote by issuing seven how-to-vote tickets. Following the vote, right and left agreed to ignore the result, put Egan back in the top position, give the left two more positions on the ticket and leave Paul Whelan as candidate in Ashfield.
On policy, the left moved to stop privatisation of the Federal Airports Corporation and the Australian National Line, but lost on factional lines to federal communications minister Michael Lee's amendment to prohibit asset sales of essential services only.
The Financial Review noted that the "motion means the Government would only take those functions the private sector is not prepared to provide, leaving the public sector to carry loss-making services".
The left also criticised Labor leader Bob Carr for his tough law and order stance against young people. Carr's policy document refers to "gangs" as "youths, their baseball caps turned back-to-front", seeks to ban "colours" or emblems associated with gangs from schools and would give police greater powers to "deal" with street "gangs".
Young Labor Left delegates, wearing baseball caps back to front, called on Carr to ban youth unemployment, social dislocation, homelessness poverty and "short-sighted headline grabbing policies". He didn't.