A shell-shocked Victorian Labor Party is beginning to turn its mind to who will replace Senator Kimberley Kitching, just days after the upper house MP died suddenly of a suspected heart attack amid a bitter preselection battle.
Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Liberty Sanger, Victorian Corrections Minister Natalie Hutchins and high-profile barrister Fiona McLeod, who stood for Labor in the Liberal seat of Higgins in 2019, have been bandied around as potential candidates to fill the vacancy.
Kimberley Kitching during a senate estimates hearing in Canberra in February.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The senate seat belongs to the right faction but is bitterly divided in Victoria between subgroups aligned with the Australian Workers’ Union, on one hand, and the Shop, Distributed and Allied Workers and Transport Workers union groupings on the other.
Three Victorian Labor figures aligned with Senator Kitching’s AWU faction, which is headed by her close friend and former party leader Bill Shorten, suggested the SDA and TWU groupings – which are loosely led by deputy federal leader Richard Marles – could be angling to take over the senate seat.
But according to one senior member of the faction, such an insensitive move by Mr Marles’ grouping could ignite “civil war”.
“Hopefully not, if I get my way,” a second source said on the condition of anonymity. “They don’t deserve it.”
Ms Hutchins is aligned to the AWU and last year considered a tilt for the federal seat of Hawke, having pushed for women to be supported in party ranks. She did not respond to calls from The Sunday Age.
She lost out in the race for that newly created seat to former state secretary Sam Rae, who is close to Mr Marles.
Mr Marles, who is seen as a divisive figure by some within the Victorian Right, did not respond to calls from The Sunday Age.
In a Zoom meeting of the Victorian right, held on Wednesday morning to discuss senate pre-selection, faction leaders declined to offer Senator Kitching’s factional opponents formal support and left her preselection to the national executive of the Labor Party, which has taken over the Victorian branch.
Friends of Senator Kitching, who was just 52, believe the meeting on Wednesday added to the stress she was under.
Corrections Minister Natalie Hutchins on the steps of the Victorian Parliament last year, pushing for the federal seat of Hawke to go to a woman.Credit:Simon Schluter
Senator Kitching pulled her car over in Strathmore and phoned her husband Andrew Landeryou, but could not be revived on Thursday afternoon. It is not known whether her thyroid condition contributed to her suspected heart attack.
The former union official and Melbourne city councillor had been a controversial choice for the senate when she was first selected.
But she quickly put the controversy over her elevation to the senate behind her and, although she rubbed some of her colleagues the wrong way, made a big impact in the less than six years she had served in the upper house.
Her sharp intellect, quick wit and humour, fearlessness about speaking out about China’s economic coercion of Australia and her determination to defend human rights – she won the Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award ceremony in 2021 for her championing – won her friends across the political spectrum.
In Victoria, local members and unions have been stripped of their voting rights in the preselection process after federal Labor intervened due to systemic branch-stacking allegations in the Victorian party.
The timing and identity of Senator Kitching’s replacement will be decided by the national executive and is yet to be finalised. The vacancy created by the resignation of Anthony Byrne in the lower house seat of Holt is likely to be sorted out first.
The contest in both seats is unlikely to be resolved before the federal budget is handed down on March 29.
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