Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

We know why people like the member for Wakefield are so sensitive about an issue like this. Every member of this place has to be a member of a union to be in this place. Not only that, Linda Savage in an article here claimed: 'Dumped Labor MP blames factions'. She wanted to be a member of the Labor Party in Western Australia and, because she would not join a faction, she lost her preselection. In this article, Ms Savage said that she could not see that 'joining a faction would make her a better MP and called on party powerbrokers to explain it to the public—if they could'.

The article continued:

Although [factions] are not mentioned in either the constitution or the rules of the WA branch of the ALP, nearly every State Labor MP is either a member of a faction, or has been at some time.

There is a really good local state member in my electorate called Tony Booty, a Labor member. He did not get a job—

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