The outgoing Labor MP for Parramatta, Julie Owens, has expressed disappointment at her party’s plans to parachute a celebrity candidate into her western Sydney seat, saying local branch preselections are “the way it should be”.
Labor is moving to install former Kevin Rudd adviser and economist Andrew Charlton as the party’s candidate in the marginal seat ahead of the upcoming federal election, prompting an outpouring of anger from branch members who want a preselection ballot to replace Owens.
Owens, who is retiring at the next election after 18 years in the seat, told the Guardian she understood the disappointment of local members, saying she believed a rank and file preselection was “the best way to go”.
“What I can say is the branches have worked incredibly hard in the last 18 years,” she said.
“The branches have really been a major part of serving the electorate of Parramatta and they actually should have a say.
“I’ve said before one of the great strengths of our democracy is that our leaders are chosen by people who know them. I firmly believe my branch members are in the best position to decide on who the best person to replace me in Parramatta is.”
Charlton is a former Rhodes scholar who served as an economics adviser to Rudd, and sources in the Labor party have confirmed he is being considered for the seat, with the national executive poised to endorse him this week.
But local members are understood to be furious with the decision. Charlton currently lives in a $16m home in the wealthy suburb of Bellevue Hill in Sydney’s east, about 30km away from the seat of Parramatta.
While it’s understood he grew up in the western Sydney suburb of Dundas, the choice of a captain’s pick in the seat comes just months after Labor announced Senator Kristina Keneally as the party’s candidate in Fowler in Sydney’s south-west, side-stepping local branch members.
At the time Keneally was a resident of the exclusive suburb of Scotland Island, though it’s understood she has since relocated to a rental property in Liverpool.
The Guardian has previously reported that local branch members had expressed their discontent, with reports the party was considering installing a candidate after a standoff between sub-factions in the party’s left.
In February the Guardian reported that the branch’s federal electoral committee had passed two separate motions calling for a rank and file ballot, while James Shaw, the local secretary, had written to Labor leader Anthony Albanese and general secretary, Bob Nanva, calling for a local preselection.
Part of the anger comes from a desire to select a candidate who, branch members say, better represents the diverse electorate of Parramatta, which Labor holds on a margin of 3.5%.
Local candidates including Abha Devasia, a union lawyer of Indian background, and solicitor Durga Owen, a Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka, had been considering running for the seat.
While Owens did not want to comment on who should be preselected to replace her, she said that “generally speaking” the parliament needed to increase its diversity.
“We’ve got a long way to go across the board, not just Labor,” she said.
“I’m cautious about saying anyone should be picked in any one place but as a general principle we need to work much harder to make sure parliament looks like the rest of the country.
“When you turn the television on you should see ‘us’, and I think for some people you turn the television on and you see ‘them’.”
While the Labor party has declined to comment publicly, Owens said she believed local branch members were best placed to choose her replacement through a rank and file ballot.
“That’s the way it should be,” she said.
“It doesn’t always work out that way unfortunately and when it doesn’t the branch members are rightfully upset about that because it’s true that they know the area.
“They’ve been with me through door-knocking 76,000 homes. For every home there was always at least three branch members with me. I wouldn’t have been able to serve Parramatta in the way I did unless I was able to do that.”
