The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, has won a struggle with Bill Shorten’s old union, the Australian Workers’ Union, to pick the next candidate for the safe Labor seat of Gorton.
Shorten’s seat of Maribyrnong will be contested by the left’s Jo Briskey while Labor’s choice for Gorton came down to a tussle between the climate crisis and water policy expert Alice Jordan-Baird and the Brimbank mayor, Ranka Rasic.
Nominations for Labor’s Victorian seats closed on Thursday, before a national executive meeting on Friday at which Anthony Albanese and the left delivered the votes for Jordan-Baird to contest the seat of the former skills minister, Brendan O’Connor.
Jordan-Baird was backed by Marles and the Transport Workers’ Union. Rasic was backed by the AWU and was understood to have the majority of support from the right faction.
Before nominations closed, one Labor source suggested the stoush would be “not as dramatic as foretold”, with “constructive conversations” likely to determine who was best for the electorate and the Albanese government.
But negotiations on Thursday failed to persuade Rasic to drop out to save face for Marles’ pick, and neither candidate withdrew. Rasic was defeated 12-9 in the ballot.
Briskey, the United Workers Union’s national political coordinator, will contest the north-west Melbourne seat of Maribyrnong, to be vacated when Shorten retires in February.
She is a former chief executive of not-for-profit The Parenthood and an organiser in the Queensland United Voice branch, who was understood to have support from the Queensland powerbroker Gary Bullock.
Both seats are considered safe for Labor, with Shorten’s 12.4% margin at the 2022 election now estimated by the ABC’s Antony Green to be up to 12.9% after a redistribution, while Gorton is also solid on a 10% margin.
In Maria Vamvakinou’s seat of Calwell, Labor will preselect her former adviser Basem Abdo, a Palestinian Australian who received her blessing when she retired in June.
