You might expect the Right and Left factions of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to be at loggerheads. After all, we’ve recently seen intense factional disputes in countries like Britain and the United States, as supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders challenged right-wing hegemony in the Labour and Democratic parties. But the ALP is a different story: its historically antagonistic factions have forged a cozy relationship and undermined party democracy in the process.

To understand how it works, we need only look at the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party. In New South Wales, the Right faction has a stranglehold over the party machinery. In theory, it could use this influence to crush the Left, but it chooses not to, recognizing that a compliant “official opposition” will help contain pressure from ALP activists who want a real change of direction for the party.

For its part, the would-be left-wing leadership, known as the Head Office Left, has bitterly opposed reforms that would democratize party structures. Its leading figure, George Simon, relies on the same gerrymandered delegate system that maintains the Right faction’s dominance to control his own tendency.