The right faction of Australia’s Labor Party (ALP) is institutionally corrupt, with the ALP branch in Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), as the sordid epicenter. Two ministers in the last NSW Labor government, both hailing from the Labor Right, have been imprisoned, and one is currently facing a retrial.

A recent investigative commission found three more NSW Labor ministers to have been engaged in corrupt conduct. The NSW general secretary is the party’s administrative head and the de facto leader of the right-wing faction. Each of the last three politicians to have filled this role has left public life in disgrace.

Sam Dastyari took $44,000 from a private donor to cover his legal bills — and then warned another donor linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that his phone might be bugged by intelligence agencies. Jamie Clements was convicted of improperly accessing electoral data, which a fellow right-winger had suggested was in order to have an opponent beaten up — a long-standing tradition in Labor Right circles.