David O’Byrne’s attempt to take over Labor leadership from Rebecca White is hotting up, with delegates at Labor’s upcoming state conference to be asked to change the rules on how their leader is chosen.
The move to allow members to vote on who is Labor’s Parliamentary leader, as reported in Fairfax papers today, will allow the ambitious Mr O’Byrne to start doing the numbers to roll Ms White.
The word is that Mr O’Byrne is confident he will get the numbers, given grassroots Party members anger at the way a deal was stitched up in the middle of the night in 2017 to make Ms White leader and her subsequent poor performance at the election.
The debate on this motion at Labor’s conference will go a long way to bring out in the open the divide in the Labor Party over their preferred leader. Which members and their branches will speak for the motion to make it easier for Mr O’Byrne to roll Ms White?