Jenny McAllister is frontrunner to take John Faulkner’s Senate seat
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Version 0 of 1. Labor party president Jenny McAllister has emerged as the frontrunner to take John Faulkner’s Senate spot when he retires at the end of his term. Faulkner, 60, who has been a senator since 1989, has announced he will not be nominating for the Senate spot and will instead retire in 2017. McAllister is considered the person most likely to fill the Senate spot, which is allocated to the party’s left. Senior NSW Labor figures from both ends of the political spectrum have told Guardian Australia they would support her nomination. “It’s Jenny McAllister, then daylight. If they were taking odds she’d be 1.01 to replace him,” one Labor MP said. McAllister did not return phone calls. The Labor left member is close to Faulkner and supports him on party reform, in particular direct election of senators by party members. She called Labor’s pre-selection process “broken” earlier this month and said the Senate by-election in Western Australia showed how far the party had to go. “Union leaders, parliamentarians and faction leaders who exercised enormous power under the old model need to accept that the old ways have to change,” she wrote in the Australian. “We need to move to a system that allows far more people to have a say in who represents Labor in the Senate.” McAllister has been national president of the Labor party since 2011 and is based in Redfern. She has been a member of Labor for 22 years, previously holding a slew of party positions, and took a tilt at the lower house in 2001 when she ran in the seat of Richmond which takes in Byron Bay, Tweed Heads and her hometown Murwillumbah. Faulkner announced his resignation on Wednesday, saying it would be an “indulgence” to seek another six year term when his current one expires in 2017. He said he would continue to push for Labor party reform for the rest of his term, as well as when he leaves the Senate. |