If anyone doubts the need for reform, may we recommend Jim Bright’s excellent piece, The ALP in New South Wales; who controls it and how?, Kevin Rudd’s letter announcing for the National Intervention into the NSW branch of the ALP, and the resulting Report into the National Intervention of the NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party.

In Kevin Rudd’s words, while reforms to date “should be encouraged and are a step in the right direction, the NSW Branch must go significantly further”.

There are reforms to be voted on by State Conference this year, on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th of July. These proposals include, amongst others, John Faulkner’s ALP Reform Agenda:

• binding and enforceable commitments to integrity, and
• direct election of Senate and Legislative Council candidates.

The NSW ALP Democracy Project (an alliance between Local Labor and OurALP) encourages you to support and campaign for these rule changes, and other pro-reform rule changes.

The conference will also be asked to formally ratify the rule changes made by the National Intervention, as per the above cited report, including the changing the election of the Administrative Committee members. Under these new rules 18 members of the committee will be elected by conference delegates from the affiliated unions, and 18 by the delegates from State and Federal electoral councils. The NSW ALP Democracy Project supports these changes, though we are concerned that they be seen as the next step towards reform, not as the final step after which no further reform will be required.

OurALP further encourages you to consider what happens between conferences when as per Rule D.1 (a)

The Administrative Committee is responsible for the management and administration of the Party between Annual Conferences.

In NSW there are no independent members of the Administrative Committee, every member of the Administrative committee belongs to one or the other of the major factions.

We believe that this has to change.

To that end, OurALP supporters will be nominating for the Administrative Committee and the Rules Committee. We ask you to support us, and to campaign for us.

Alternately, if you are pro-reform but would prefer not to support us, we ask you to run. We ask you to nominate yourself, or to nominate someone you would trust with the direction of the Party.

Nominees and nominators must have been Party members since 2012. They are not required to be conference delegates.

Nomination forms must be received by head office by 12 noon this coming Friday, the 27th. In theory, nomination forms are available from head office. In practice, and contrary to the spirit of Conference, we have found them to be not entirely forthcoming. Therefore, you may instead wish to download one of these: Administrative Committee nomination form, Rules nomination form. If you choose to nominate, we would appreciate you letting us know, perhaps via an email to ben.aveling@ouralp.net, so that we can work together between now and conference.