Federal Labor has finalised its candidates in a number of crucial seats ahead of this year’s election, including the controversial choice of Andrew Charlton to contest Parramatta and a consensus replacement for Kimberley Kitching in the Senate.
Nominations for vacant positions closed on Monday, with only one candidate to replace each of Kitching, retiring Victorian left senator Kim Carr, MP Julie Owens and right faction MP Anthony Byrne.
Jana Stewart, a Mutthi Mutthi and Wamba Wamba woman and former Victorian public servant, will take Kitching’s Senate spot. Before the vacancy had been filled Kitching’s death sparked factional in-fighting in the Victorian ALP. Allies of Kitching and the outgoing senator Carr have sought leave to fight the federal party’s control over preselections in the high court.
The Victorian corrections minister, Natalie Hutchins, who was backed by Kitching’s faction, and the former Higgins candidate, Fiona McLeod, who was backed by the larger right faction of deputy leader, Richard Marles, did not contest the vacancy.
Carr, who announced his retirement on Sunday, will be replaced by Linda White, a former Australian Services Union official – but only after 1 July, assuming Labor wins two Senate seats in Victoria in the upcoming May poll.
Labor’s right faction selected Cassandra Fernando, a Shop Distributive and Allied Employees organiser, for the safe seat of Holt in Melbourne’s south-east, refusing to cede the seat to the left faction despite its superior numbers in Labor’s membership.
Fernando is a Sri Lankan-Australian, whose nomination will help the right redress the underrepresentation of women in its faction.
Charlton, a managing director of Accenture who worked as an economic adviser to Kevin Rudd, will contest the seat of Parramatta – a seat on the Coalition’s target list held by Labor on a margin of 3.5%.
Charlton was backed by the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, but his preselection is controversial as it is the second time in a year the ALP has installed a person from an Anglo-Celtic background over candidates from diverse backgrounds into a western Sydney seat.
At least three candidates from Parramatta – or nearby branches – considered a run at the seat: Durga Owen, a former staffer of the retiring MP; Alan Mascarenhas, a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist; and Abha Devasia, a lawyer from Labor’s hard left.
But they did not contest the preselection, reflecting the view that Charlton was favoured.
