Power struggle hits conference

Press, 1 May 1989, Page 1

Power struggle hits conference

By

PETER LUKE

in Auckland

The Backbone Club fought a power struggle with the trade union Left of the Labour Party yesterday, leaving the party’s Auckland regional conference in tatters.

In open meeting the two factions unleashed an outright assault of personal jibuse on each other at a level so nasty that seasoned delegates could only greet the closing of the conference with relief. The two factions seemed to draw almost equal support from the 180-odd delegates from the 30 electorates represented. But frequent victories by. Backbone Club members on the conference floor, on remit votes, forced trade union affiliates to reach for their little red cards.

Time and time again yesterday the unions called for a card vote, knowing that their affiliate entitlement would sweep them to victory. “Bring out the phantoms,” yelled one unionist, referring to Backbone Club allegations that the entitlement on the cards was often spurious.

Backbone Club members are prominent supporters of the ousted Minister of Finance, Mr Roger Douglas. But their chief issue yesterday as,constitutional remits were debated was the “undemocratic” power the unions could wield. Club members confided that their hopes for “reform” rest on resolution of the Auckland Central wrangle. But they promoted a series of

remits yesterday to place curbs on union influence that were so provocative that a row with the trade union affiliates was inevitable.

Knowing they would lose each on a card vote, the point of the exercise seemed to be to use full public exposure both to make their case, then demonstrate how a majority vote on a show of hands could be overturned.

Club supporters, notably those from Auckland Central, and the Manukau Youth and Industrial Maritime, branches, won two early victories yesterday. They defeated an attempt to refer nine remits to the constitutional committee of the party’s national council, where according to one heckler they would be

"buried away in the party structure.”

A subsequent union-supported attempt to exclude the news media was defeated by 100 votes to 83 — a margin suggesting that the party’s Centre, largely invisible at the conference, also wanted open debate.

But from there the conference degenerated into a skirmish of points of order, and challenges to the rulings of the chairman. Arguments on both sides about the union role rehearsed stock positions, as delegates' tempers frayed. By mid-morning the chairman, Mr Peter Hoyte, acknowledged the conference split by allowing pairs of tellers to check voting in each section of the hall, as allegations of cheating developed.

On at least one occasion the club itself called for a card vote to make its point. Then — as on most card votes — largely did not bother to hold up their own cards with single voting entitlements.

Mr Hoyte described this as “hypocrisy” but was forced to withdraw his comment amid a torrent of protest. Ironically, early conference calls for party unity had appeared aimed at the prospect of public defections to the incipient New Labour Party. One delegate did burn his party card — on Saturday — but the shadow of Jim Anderton was quickly replaced in conference controversy by the reality of the Left-Right power struggle.

Dyson, page 7