Bracks Watch

Warlords, phantoms and stacks

Australian Labor Party frontbencher Kelvin Thomson thoughtfully provided a definition of branch stacking and phantom branches within the Victorian Branch of the Australian Labor Party:

1. Branches that don't meet;
2. Members who don't pay their own fees;
3. Members who are invisible during election campaigns.

One of the Labor Party branches in Thomson's electorate of Wills, Anstey, has not contacted him in his nine years in parliament, and has held meetings just a handful of times.

Labor Party Socialist Left faction warlord Senator Kim ("Il") Carr contended that 71 per cent of Labor Party members in Victoria pay one of the two concessional membership rates. In the electorate of Gorton the figure is almost 95 per cent. This means that either the overwhelming majority of Labor Party members are unemployed, healthcare card holders, or earning up to just A$32,000 per annum; or that some factional warlord is paying the bulk of membership fees, and wanting to get as much value for money as possible by signing up concessional members.

There are some wonderful articles about the Labor Party shenanigans here and here, while some of us are also revelling in the revelations of Labor Party businessman Andrew Landeryou in his own weblog.

posted by 9C @ 6:08 AM