Labor Party reform is vital, but this time around it needs to be
more substantial and far-reaching than previously to secure the party’s
long-term future.
AAP/Alan Porritt
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent
Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a
series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future
prospects.
Dealing with an existential crisis is never easy. It requires asking
hard questions and a commitment to real change. Each is hard enough but
the latter particularly hard. Often we know what needs to be done but
keep putting it off to a later day.
This applies to organisations as much as it does to individuals. The
current state of the Australian Labor Party is a good case study in this
politics of avoidance. Its membership base has all but collapsed, its primary vote is at a historic low and its constitution is corporatist and constraining.
The ALP is, however, still a nationally important organisation with a
base in civil society and our political institutions, local, state and
federal. This leads many of its leaders and managers – inside and
outside parliament – to think that the crisis is part of the normal
cycle of politics and good times will return.
The problems the ALP needs to address are twofold. The first are
organisational and managerial and the second are ideological and
political. The first takes us to its constitution and the second to its
platform and policies.
Organisational reform
Constitutional reform needs a principle and that has to be
democratic. That means a membership system based on one person, one vote
and one value. Any compromises to that principle require clearly
demonstrated political benefits.
In such a system, branches could be geographic, industrial or
issue-based. That is, of course, a good description of how politics more
generally is organised today.
The ALP’s corporatist structure puts too much power in the hands of
too few people. Good people and advocates of justice they may be – and
many are – but centuries of political science, whether conservative,
liberal or republican, can’t be wrong. Power can, and too much power
certainly will, corrupt those who hold it.
Labor needs to be not just more democratic but also more
professional, in particular in policy development and candidate
selection. The party relies too heavily on vested interests when
developing policy. It needs to draw more heavily on evidence-based
research and be more willing to involve the community using proven
methods of citizen engagement, such as citizens’ assemblies and juries.
It will not be enough just to incorporate primaries into the
pre-selection process, as important as that is. Potential candidates
need to be identified and tested for their personal and political
capabilities, just as any serious organisation does.
The current system that virtually excludes all but a few union-based
factional leaders and their supporters isn’t bad because the people
involved are inherently bad – they aren’t – but because it defies
democratic and managerial logic.
Platform reform
The preferred option regarding platform and policies is where Labor
is really struggling. Is it a union-based party or is it a social
democratic party?
In the past, the numerically strong labour movement negotiated with
the party leadership over policy priorities. But in this mix were plenty
of ordinary members who could influence the process. It certainly
wasn’t perfect, but the balancing that occurred between leaders, unions
and members did allow for new ideas to emerge and did push the ALP in
the direction of the common good.
Today, the situation is quite different. Social democracy is struggling to find the air it needs to breathe.
Firstly, there is the role of Labor’s union-based right wing, which exercises what can be described as socially and industrially conservative
influence on policy. That means party acceptance of a conscience vote
not just on issues like abortion and euthanasia but also on stem-cell
research and same-sex marriage.
social democratic element within the ALP is struggling to influence the
party’s platform through avenues such as the national conference.
AAP/Paul Miller
The convictions of the Christian Democrats in the ALP are honestly
held but are clearly at the expense of Labor as a political organisation
keen to draw support from the wider community. In some ways, they play
the same role as the old left did in the 1960s and act as a veto power
on Labor renewal. The result is that plenty of votes that should be
Labor’s have gone elsewhere.
There is also the question of economic and industrial policy. A veto
power again exists when it comes to microeconomic reform. In the
Hawke-Keating years, the labour movement and the government entered into
a contract that gave support to economic reform so long as there was a
social wage built around health, education and training in return.
However, for some in Labor’s industrial ranks, these policies weren’t
anything more than a transfer of power from labour to capital. Today
they are reluctant to embrace further reform. They weren’t always wrong
in this judgement and the get-rich-quick faction within the business
class was given too much licence.
Some Labor-affiliated unions see economic – and environmental –
reform as a threat to their organisational position in the labour
market. The problem is serious reform is still needed and that demands
strategic thinking of the sort we saw in the 1980s.
Lessons from history
In many ways there is a tragic quality to the situation. A
significant number of Labor strategists blame the alliances that have
been made with the Greens and others as the cause of the problem. In fact, they are the result of Labor’s historically weak primary vote.
The assumption seems to be that if only Labor returned to its
industrial base and focused on economics above all else, all would be
well again. What this so-called strategy actually means is that the
Greens and others are left free to plunder votes that would be available
to a genuinely social democratic party interested in social and
environmental as well as economic issues.
The truth is that the ALP is like any organisation, be it private,
community or public sector. It needs external sustenance, which only
comes if it is trusted and if it is relevant. Both elements are missing –
or at least are missing to the extent needed for the party to flourish.
Harking back to the glory days of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating might
make parliamentarians and party members feel good – just as harking back
to John Curtin and Ben Chifley made the party feel good in the 1960s.
However, feeling good and doing well are two different things.
In fact, in the 1960s, it took a supreme effort by Gough Whitlam and
his fellow reformers to confront this complacency and put the party back
on a trajectory of success. Hawke and Keating – and their state
equivalents – fed off the assets so created by the reformers; some very
effectively, some not so effectively and some not at all.
AAP/Paul Miller
The need for reform
All too often it seems Labor is back in the early 1960s again,
complacent and self-congratulatory rather than self-aware and hungry.
Reform is vital, but this time around it needs to be more substantial
and far-reaching.
Unlike in Whitlam’s era, trade unions are really struggling and too
reliant on the ALP for sustenance. The links of some unions to Labor
aren’t helping them renew, nor are they helping the party.
It’s a post-colonial world in economics as well as politics and
culture. That means the “costs of production” can’t be swept under the
carpet. Politically, it’s an era of “communicative abundance” and
“ideological confusion” rather than a simple battle between left and
right.
Add to all of that climate change and the fears and uncertainties it
has created and then ask the question: is Labor in a position to offer
leadership as it did in the early 20th century (the Great Australian Settlement), the 1940s (the Keynesian welfare state) and again in the late 20th century (national economic reform)?
