Campaign to reform NSW Young Labor launched

Having written about the need to reform Young Labor in the past, I was pleased to find out that NSW Young Labor members have launched a campaign to reform NSW Young Labor and introduce One Member One Vote (OMOV). The campaign was launched with open letter to the NSW ALP General Secretary calling for democratisation.

New South Wales is the only state branch of Young Labor that not directly elect its Executive or Office Bearers through OMOV. All the other branches, regardless of whether the Right or Left faction is in the majority, use OMOV either through an AGM ballot or postal vote.

 

Table 1. Election methods: Young Labor – States and Territories.

State	Model	Process	Eligibility	Participation Test
NSW		Executive Ballot	Executive Members only
TAS	One Member One Vote	Postal Ballot	All YL Members	Financial for 6 months and attendance at 2 official meetings of party units in two years.
QLD	One Member One Vote	Postal Ballot	All YL Members	6 months membership plus a member of a QLD Labor Branch
VIC	One Member One Vote	AGM Ballot/Postal vote for rural and regions	All YL Members	Must preregister for AGM
WA	One Member One Vote	AGM Ballot	All YL Members	Member at close of roll
ACT	One Member One Vote	AGM Ballot	All YL Members	Member of ACT Sub-branch, 3 months and attended an ACT Young Labor Meeting
SA	One Member One Vote	AGM Ballot	All YL Members	Member at close of rolls

There are many arguments for OMOV such as driving cultural change and increasing member participation but the simplest reason for it was put by Dom Anderson and Dannie Grufferty in an article for LabourList earlier this year:

The fact of the matter is that if you don’t believe each of your members deserve a say, then you neither trust, nor truly respect them.

If you are a NSW Young Labor member, please consider joining the campaign. Without democratic reform of all our party’s institutions, it will be far harder to end the party’s toxic culture of dealing and factionalism.