Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, says the party will assess its internal culture in “an ongoing way” after facing a barrage of questions about whether the late senator Kimberley Kitching was bullied and ostracised by senior colleagues.
Marles said on Thursday he understood the “legitimacy of asking questions” about events prior to Kitching’s sudden death at the age of 52.
But the Victorian right winger said he had known Kitching for 30 years and the “whole Labor movement is in a state of grief and shock”.
Marles told reporters in Hobart he did not accept “assertions that have been in the media” about the way Kitching had been treated, or what subsequent actions she or others might have taken.
But he said he did not intend to “get into that debate now” given her family and friends were battling grief.
A reporter from The Australian newspaper put it to Marles that he might “be using … eulogies to not answer questions, which is a shameful thing to do”.
Marles said he “profoundly” rejected that assertion. “I’d really think about the question that you’ve just asked,” he told the reporter.
“I’ve rarely said it in an interview, but that’s offensive”.
Since her sudden death of a heart attack last week, friends and allies of Kitching have argued she was effectively ostracised by Labor’s Senate leadership team of Penny Wong, Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher, after a series of internal disagreements.
Wong and Gallagher have suggested in public commentary they disagree with some of the assertions being made about their behaviour, but have declined to engage in detail, citing respect for Kitching’s grieving friends and family.
Kitching – a longtime player in Labor’s Victorian right faction, and friend and factional ally of Labor’s former leader, Bill Shorten – was also facing a battle to secure preselection to remain in the Senate at the coming election.
Because of an extraordinary federal intervention in the Victorian branch of the Labor party, triggered by a significant branch stacking scandal, current preselections in the state are determined by the national executive.
The power of Labor’s national executive to determine the fate of individual MPs and senators has caused anxiety in the state branch.
Speaking the morning after Kitching’s sudden death, Shorten said she had been under considerable stress. “I’m not a coroner, I can’t tell you why this woman at 52 was taken from us, but I have no doubt the stress of politics and the machinations in the back rooms had its toll”.
Marles was asked by a reporter on Wednesday whether Kitching had raised a bullying complaint with him. He did not directly answer the question.
He was asked if he knew why the ALP national executive had not endorsed Kitching’s preselection “given even the Dalai Lama has paid his respects to her?”
Labor’s deputy leader said pre-selection processes remained under way for a number of positions “which includes the Victorian Senate, which is more than senator Kitching, in the sense that there are more people than just her on the ticket, and that is still a pre-selection to occur”.
Marles said Kitching’s life was “not defined by those questions, it’s really not – and in a moment where somebody has passed and where a funeral is to come, it is about thinking about the totality of what someone has done”.
Asked whether he believed Kitching’s friends and supporters should be “more sensitive” in the timing of their allegations, Marles said: “I understand people’s grief in this moment”.
“But right now the right thing, I believe, in terms of honouring Kimberley Kitching is to be celebrating her life in this moment, doing everything we can, given the shock of the circumstances, and that’s what I’ll be doing”.
Kitching’s funeral is next Monday.