In the 2022 federal election, Labor members in the supposedly safe seat of Fowler were not allowed to choose their candidate. Instead, head office parachuted star performer Kristina Keneally into the seat and were rewarded with a huge “up yours” by voters. The seat was lost with an 18% swing against Keneally, a punishment which prompted a senior Labor member’s comment, “I bloody hope we’ve learned that imposition from on high is deeply resented”.
That lesson has not been learned. Advance three years to the contest for another “safe” Labor seat, this time Barton previously held by former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Linda Burney. Her early announcement that she would not stand in the 2025 election gave party officials ample time to run an open, transparent process for a new candidate to be elected by the approximate 1000 Labor members in that constituency. Several candidates nominated but assumptions that Labor would operate democratically proved naive.
On 3 December, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acted, his disdain for the rank and file compounded by an apparent masochistic wish to repeat the Fowler humiliation, but this time in Barton. He wrote to Paul Erickson, the national secretary of the Australian Labor Party, “With the Hon Linda Burney retiring, we need an exceptional candidate in the field over summer… Accordingly, I request that the matter of preselection of a candidate for Barton be determined by the ALP National Executive.”
Trade union leaders immediately criticised what they saw as the prime minister’s “disrespect for card carrying members”. Tony Callinan, NSW Branch secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, commented. “It is obvious we’ve got a PM with blatant disregard for party procedures and policies.” The NSW Labor general secretary, Dominic Ofner, wrote to Erickson expressing opposition to the PM’s intervention, though months earlier he had been criticised for failing to call for an open preselection in Barton.
Promotion of different candidates for this western Sydney constituency had been characterised by the competing interests of so-called right and left-wing union preferences, but despite time-worn faction paraphernalia, each union supported nominee was claimed to have been sufficiently attractive to win the seat in 2025. Influential unionists agreed that Shaoquett Moselmane, long-time Labor loyalist, local resident and former Labor MP in the NSW Upper House, “almost certainly has the numbers in Barton”, but as a Muslim and a fervent supporter of Palestinians’ rights to self determination, his selection would have been distasteful to Head Office, “even a headache”.
Although half of the ALP National Executive are reported to have boycotted the vote for a Barton candidate, the head office vote proceeded. Ashvini Ambihaipur, a resident of Barton and an experienced Georges River councillor, has been chosen. She will be the new, but imposed, candidate, not a preselected one.
When the ALP’s National Executive imposed Keneally on Fowler in 2022, the electoral chances for Labor were far more optimistic than in 2025, when a hung parliament appears to be the government’s best chance of retaining some reins of power. Irrespective of the qualities of candidate Ambihaipur, who in any case might have stood a chance of being elected by local members, she will be facing not only a likely swing against Labor, but also local dismay that the politically destructive arrogance which occurred in Fowler has been repeated in Barton.
Respect for democracy, let alone for the judgment of local members, has been replaced by a leader’s fascination with appearing to be strong by ignoring local interests, a stupidity which seems likely to backfire again.
The Fowler-Barton chicanery conceals a bigger issue. Fear of people’s interests is being replaced worldwide by compliance with the wishes of terrifying bullies, Trump and Musk in the US, Orban in Hungary, Netanyahu in Palestine and across the Middle East.
In personal traits, Albanese exhibits none of the fascist like conduct exhibited by authoritarians from overseas, but opposition leader Dutton is impressed by Trump and Netanyahu, and would like to fool the nation as much as Labor’s National Executive has bowed to the prime minister’s request and sidestepped the rank and file members in Barton.
In the short term, efficient authoritarianism via disdain for democracy may seem easy and appealing. In the longer term — think for a minute about hard-fought human rights — it usually has disastrous consequences.
Voting in Barton in 2025 may have more to teach than merely the selection of a new MP in that Australian constituency,
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