(Image by John Graham / johngraham.alphalink.com.au) The Labor Party under Bill Shorten must ensure it rejects any accommodation with Rupert Murdoch, says former News Ltd executive Rodney E. Lever.
The price of wool was falling in 1891.
The men who owned the acres saw something must be done.
“We’ll break the shearer’s union and show we’re masters still.
And they’ll take the terms we give them, or we’ll find the men who will.
From Clermont to Barcaldine the shearer’s camps were full.
When through the west by thunder rang out the union’s call.
“The sheds’ll be shore by union or they won’t be shorn at all.”
O Billy Lane was with them, his words were like a flame.
The flag of blue above them, it spoke Eureka’s name.
“Tomorrow,” said the squatters, “they may not be so keen.”
“We can mount three thousand horsemen to show them what we mean.
We’ll pack the west with troopers from Burke to Charters Towers,
You can have your fill of speeches but the final strength is ours.”
To the trial at Rockhampton fourteen men were brought.
“We’ll find a law,” the squatters said, “that’s made for times like these.”
The judge had got his orders. The squatters owned the court.
When they gaol a man for striking, it’s a rich man’s country yet.
A NEILSEN POLL
taken half-way through May revealed a sharp drop in Tony Abbott’s
approval rating: a two-party preferred result that followed the LNP’s
horror budget with Labor showing 56 and a sudden drop to 44 for the
government. Newspoll shows similar numbers and this week's Morgan Poll
was even worse for the Government.
Great news for the Opposition, but it doesn’t herald an early
election. When there is one, will Labor be ready? In politics things can
change very quickly.
Media commentators constantly have to find new things to say and one
writer has suggested that Opposition Leader Bill Shorten needs to reform
his party to lift its rating.
Lots of people have tried to reform political parties.
One who did was Gough Whitlam, back in the 1970s. First he had to see out dear old Arthur Augustus Calwell, a man with the rasping voice of a bull calf looking for its mother, but still capable of almost defeating the hated RG Menzies in 1961. In Opposition, Calwell made Whitlam his deputy. “The faceless men” of the ALP ultimately did replace Arthur.
'Faceless men',
by the way, was a phrase used by Whitlam in his clash with Calwell and
frequently used by the Coalition and News Corp press to berate Labor.
The “faceless men” refers to the party’s National Executive, which can influence leadership changes, but does not always have the final say.
Photographs from the Daily Telegraph, 1963. (Images via brucehawker.com)
Arthur Calwell was a lunchtime regular at a restaurant in Melbourne just across the road from the old Truth
building, where I was working at the time. I often enjoyed lunch and a
beer with him. He was an amusing companion with a great sense of
humour.
One day, he saw Keith Murdoch, Rupert’s father, entering King’s Hall at the old Parliament House and screeched at the top of his bellowing high-pitched voice:
“There’s that bastard Murdoch, don’t let him in.”
Arthur was traditional Labor, born just five years after the great Shearers' Strike that birthed the Labor Party. It was Whitlam who brought Labor back to power, with the help of Rupert Murdoch,
who in one of the great twists of political change, then brought
Whitlam and Labor down by the simple means of bullying a drunken
governor-general and ensured the appointment of the Malcolm Fraser
Liberal-Country Party coalition.
I recall one conversation with Rupert in which we discussed “freedom of the press”.
It was a phrase that could be interpreted in two ways: the freedom to
publish anything you wanted to publish, or the freedom to publish
without fear or favour. My interpretation was the latter. Rupert’s, of
course, has turned out to be the former.
Bill Shorten’s task today is no less than Whitlam’s, but today’s
Australia has also changed. Politics has entered a completely new era.
Kevin Rudd’s Labor was of his own creation. But Kevin was a control
freak in a situation where it wasn’t physically possible, nor even
desirable to do so. Whitlam simply appointed his ministers and left them
to get on with their work, sometimes with dire results. Whitlam lost
Murdoch’s support simply because he was not taking Rupert’s phone calls,
nor inviting him for lunch nor wanting his advice or accepting Rupert’s
other invitations.
Labor must give up all connections with Rupert Murdoch.
Hawke and Keating made a tragic mistake in their "princes of print" decision, and paid a heavy price giving him the power he has used
in every subsequent election to bring Labor down. There is no freedom
of the press when one proprietor owns a majority of the papers in a
country, and even less of any kind of freedom when the same individual
owns a majority of leading book publishers and a majority of television
services.
The limit of any advice I would offer to Bill Shorten would be to not
cosy to Murdoch. The power of the Murdoch press is failing in Australia
and it must fail if we are to maintain a strong and rich country.
There are plenty of people around who want to tell Bill Shorten what
to do. One recent headline offered him advice on how to develop a Labor
policy program and reform the party. That advice is almost facetious. To
reform the party now is neither necessary or desirable. The Labor Party
does not need reform, in my view. Certainly it needs more members and a
greater balance of non-union members. And the party needs Anthony Albanese, the favourite of the public, to take on more of a leading role in the party’s day to day activities.
Labor came out of the last election with a generally popular set of
admirable and totally workable policies ready to be installed. Tony
Abbott thought so highly of them that he promised not to change
anything. Everybody knows now what he did after the election,
astoundingly under the influence of Joe Hockey — whose views, anyway,
are simply based on the discredited and outmoded economic theories of a past age.
The world has changed dramatically. We have seen many countries sink
into serious poverty as a result of the concentration of enormous wealth
in a few powerful hands. Do we need to be reminded again that it was
the Labor Party under Kevin Rudd who was, for all his personal faults
and his obsessive over-management, intelligent enough to recognise the
emergence of a global disaster and save Australia from the worst effects of avarice and mismanagement carried out within some of the world’s most powerful banks.
A writer in the Saturday Paper has offered the view that
Labor was challenged intellectually. Sorry sir, but Labor is far ahead
of the coalition already in intellectual brainpower. That was on show in
the Opposition benches between 2007 and 2013. Could anybody see
anything resembling even slightly intellectual in the performances before and after the election of any on the front bench of the LNP?
This time, the Australian public is more alert. Their anger at Labor
is dissipating rapidly. Labor has heard the cries from what the Murdoch
papers called “Struggle Street”.
Labor's last term was destroyed by the results of its own internal
machinations. Now it can show that those days are over and the team
spirit in the party will overcome the inevitable few who allow their
personal ego to unbalance the party. This is what Bill Shorten and the
reliable and steady hands of Anthony Albanese need to do.
In the meantime, the Coalition will carry on in its chaotic way. No
double dissolution, please. In 2016, we will surely have a return to
sanity. Australians will have been robbed of three years of urgently
needed progress by a Coalition Government prepared to engage in
doubling-dealing duplicity. The country is not going broke, but it may
well do so if we do not heed the message of Naom Chomsky.
At the age of 85, Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. He is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He is also a severe critic of American foreign policies and of the
mainstream news media. He has proudly admitted to being a political
activist, a revolutionary and a libertarian socialist.
Many years ago I read one of his books and mentioned part of it to Rupert Murdoch, who doesn’t read books even though he intends to become the world’s biggest book publisher.
Murdoch replied:
“Oh, he is all bullshit!”
In the last few weeks, Noam Chomsky became a favourite topic in
Australia with his YouTube video, which is all about how to wreck a
nation’s economy:
Noam Chomsky (2014) "How to Ruin an Economy; Some Simple Ways"
It has attracted a huge number of hits in Australia via Twitter, for
the obvious reason that the Australian Government under the leadership
of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey is engaging in exactly the form of
economic vandalism that Chomsky has derided.
Bill Shorten will use a landmark speech on Tuesday to propose
sweeping changes to the ALP to weaken the influence of unions, extend
direct election of candidates, broaden policy formulation, and attract
thousands of new members.
Relying on what he will call ''my mandate as the first
member-elected leader of the Australian Labor Party'', his radical plan
involves the most significant cultural shift in Labor internal
structures in decades including an end to Labor's longstanding
requirement on prospective members that they be members of a relevant
union.
''I believe it should no longer be compulsory for prospective
members of the Labor Party to join a union, and I have instructed our
national secretary to have this requirement removed from Labor Party
rules,'' his speech notes say.
He also has flagged a sharp reduction in union say in Labor's
supreme policy making body, it's triennial national conference, by
constructing its membership in future through ''a mix of people directly
elected from and by Labor members, and those elected by state
conferences''.
That could see union representation at national conferences -
the next one being scheduled for 2015 - dropping from as high as 70 per
cent to as low as 25 per cent.
The ambitious democratisation push is aimed at modernising
the face and the body of Labor by breaking the grip of unions and
factional chieftains and delivering the ALP from the pernicious
influence of back-room players and so-called faceless men.
The moves could face stiff resistance from those very
quarters, especially because Mr Shorten believes the challenges facing
his party go much deeper than mere presentation.
Declaring ''today is the day to face up to some hard
truths,'' the rookie Labor leader will lead off his argument with the
admission that it was not Tony Abbott who had sent the ALP packing into
opposition at the last election but the voters themselves.
''Unless we change, it is where we will stay,'' he will argue in the address to Melbourne's The Wheeler Centre.
But to drive the change, Mr Shorten also has a message for
the legions of Labor detractors - erstwhile supporters in the broader
electorate who had become some of the party's chief critics in office:
''If you think the system is broken, help us fix it''.
''If you opt out, if you choose the 'plague on both your
houses' option, then you are depriving the country of your talents,' he
will say.
He believes the removal of the compulsory union membership rule is more than mere symbolism.
'''This change makes it plain that in 2014, Labor is not the
political arm of anything but the Australian people,'' his speech notes
say.
With the government's controversial royal commission into
union corruption preparing for its first hearings, it is clear the Labor
leader, who himself once headed one of the country's more powerful
unions, wants to more clearly delineate Labor from unions, many of which
are struggling from declining membership, and a perception of being
career advancement vehicles for would-be Labor MPs.
In a blunt vindication of the conservative attack on Labor's
close relationship with trades halls, Mr Shorten will call for his party
to ''write a new democratic contract'' admitting the part of unions in
Labor had ''developed into a factional, centralised decision-making
role''.
As previously reported by Fairfax Media, Mr Shorten will also
propose a 20 per cent increase in direct election of candidates in
lower house seats where ALP branches have memberships above 300.
''In Victoria, this will mean a 70:30 split in favour of local party members,'' his speech says.
Joe Bullock's fringe views are out of touch with even his
own union's members, writes Senator Louise Pratt, who says Labor must
stop letting union powerbrokers make grubby deals that destroy the
Party's chances.
My biggest disagreement is with his statement that Labor can’t be trusted with looking after the interests of working people and their families.
I know it can. In fact, I know it is the only party that can.
I have seen and been part of delivering massive improvements for ordinary Australians.
Labor has delivered the things on which Australians rely on for
quality of life: the aged pension, Medicare, superannuation, better
wages and working conditions, education funding, the National Disability
Insurance Scheme, commencing the National Broadband Network and taking
action on climate change.
To protect this legacy, we must be able to win more seats in
Parliament especially here in WA. To win more seats, the Party needs the
confidence of voters.
We will never have that confidence while debates about factional
carve ups dominate the media instead of the real issues of importance to
Western Australian voters. The answer is not to shut down debate, to
keep quiet and keep doing business as usual. The only solution is to
tackle our problems, fix our processes, and reform and democratise our
party.
The WA Labor Party is the least democratic of all Labor Party branches around the nation.
The impact of installing the head of the Shop, Distributive &
Allied Employees Union (SDA), Joe Bullock, at the top of Labor’s Senate
ticket, with complete disregard for the views of the broader Labor Party
membership, let alone the electoral impact, shows just how deep the
ALP’s problems in WA run. ALP campaign strategists are completely out of
touch with how much political capital the party enjoys in the eyes of
the electorate if the party thinks it can implement these deals and
still run a successful election campaign.
This is not a problem caused by union members exercising too much
power in the Party. Nor is it a problem caused by union powerbrokers
putting their members’ interests first.
It is caused by exactly the opposite — by union members having no say
in the backroom deals done to deliver Parliamentary seats, and by union
powerbrokers ignoring the views and the needs of the working men and
women they purport to represent.
This became painfully obvious when Joe Bullock’s union SDA and union United Voice did a deal to install Bullock in the Senate.
The SDA have consistently used their voting bloc
to preselect members of Parliament who are anti-marriage equality and
anti-choice. I know of no other union prepared to be so out of touch
with its own union membership for the sake of building its own power
base.
My first job off the family farm in 1990 at 17 years of age was as a
Coles shop assistant and the SDA was the very first union I joined. The
young man on the checkout next to me was gay, as was another young woman
in the variety section.
The overwhelming majority of people in retail support the rights of
their gay work colleagues. The majority of West Australians are pro-equality. Far from my views being fringe, as Joe Bullock characterised them, it is his views that are on the fringe.
United Voice – whose members include those working in hospitality, in
childcare, and in children’s services – claims to be a progressive
union, yet did this grubby deal
to put into Federal Parliament someone who consistently opposes the
rights of their members in exchange for the SDA’s support to enable
United Voice to claim a different seat for one of their own.
This kind of multi-election log-rolling with no regard for union
members, party members, or voters, has become all too common in WA Labor
and it is poisoning us.
I am not going to disingenuously claim that my opinion on this is not
coloured by my own experience. Of course I am disappointed with the
election result and I am angry that my experience, my achievements in
the Senate and my progressive values meant nothing in the face of a
scramble to secure seats that took neither values nor ability into
account.
What I am most disappointed and most angry about is that Labor’s
members, supporters, and voters have been treated with utter disrespect
by those entrusted with Labor’s course. Working men and women in Western
Australia – in all of Australia – depend on Labor to protect Medicare,
to make sure every child gets the education they need and to stand up
for the working conditions of everyday Australians.
I may not be a Senator, but I will be all right.
Hundreds of thousands of West Australians face savage cuts at a State and a Federal level, with no check on the Liberals’ excesses.
Labor must change our ways. Not for my sake, not for Labor’s sake –
but for the sake of the very many Australians who depend on us to
protect their interests and deliver the services they depend on.
I am leaving the Senate – but I am not leaving the Party. I joined
Labor because I believe in working to build a better Australia and that a
Labor government is the only way to bring about the changes that will
do that.
I still believe that — but to do that, we must first build a better Labor Party.
As an ordinary member of the Labor Party, I will continue to work for
the principles of social justice and equal rights, of worker’s rights
and fair and decent employment conditions, of help for those who need
it.
And my voice will be one of thousands within the Party not just asking for change, but demanding it.
Senator Louise Pratt will be relinquishing her seat in the Federal Senate on 30 June 2014.
Whither the unions? What Shorten can learn from UK Labour
the recent Western
stralia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of
articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future
prospects…
British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has embarked on sweeping
internal reform of his party. Should his Australian counterpart Bill
Shorten follow suit? EPA/Andy Rain
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.
In a post-industrial and neoliberal era, questions of identity are
posing acute problems for political parties with ties to organised
labour all over the world. Reflecting on the Australian Labor Party’s
dismal showing in the Western Australian Senate by-election, former WA premier Geoff Gallop presciently asked of the ALP:
Is it a union-based party or is it a social democratic party?
This existential crisis about Labor and trade unions has been
ongoing, and not just in Australia. But as federal Labor leader Bill
Shorten seeks to reinvent his party, he will do well to examine the reforms his UK counterpart Ed Miliband has introduced to the Labour Party in Britain.
In Britain, the relationship between the unions and Labour has been fractious for a while. Since the 1990s, new “super-unions” have emerged. UNISON (formed in 1993) and Unite (formed in 2007) are the current big players.
In addition, there has been a new generation of left-leaning trade union leaders. The late Bob Crow, the former head of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (the RMT), was perhaps the most prominent of these. Len McCluskey, who heads Unite, has made noises about severing the union’s historic link with Labour.
However, it was Unite’s activities that prompted the latest crisis
between the unions and Labour. Unite was accused of vote-rigging in the Falkirk pre-selection, leading to further claims that McCluskey (and in turn Miliband himself) were elected with the help of “phantom” members.
In response, Miliband has led a fresh round of internal reform. At a
special conference in March, he won party backing to reform the link
with the unions.
The main reform is to move towards one-member one-vote (OMOV) for
choosing the Labour leader. Currently, the party leader is elected
through an electoral college: one-third of the vote from the unions,
one-third from the parliamentary party, and one-third from party
members.
Significantly, Miliband has backing to reform wider membership of the
party. Trade union leaders remain under fire for exercising
disproportionate influence over Labour: not all of their members vote
Labour, but their numbers count in shaping policy and pre-selections.
Under the new rules, affiliated trade union members will have to choose
to become a supporter or member of the Labour Party.
Debate continues as to whether either Labour or the unions gain from these reforms. McCluskey and Unite have signalled
that their donations to the party will drop dramatically. However, the
number of individual union and party members could increase, bolstering
Labour’s campaigning presence. That is a crucial factor in increasing
voter turnout at elections.
These reforms build upon recent changes where Labour created a new
category of “registered supporter” to increase involvement. In addition,
Labour will move towards the greater use of primaries for
pre-selections – starting with the 2016 London mayoral elections.
For Miliband, there is a dual pressure to both reformulate the link
with the unions but also push for broader appeal. In Miliband’s words,
the aim of the reforms is to “let people back into our politics”.
However, the unions will still retain a 50% block vote at Labour’s party
conference and also retain their quota on the party’s national
executive.
Two wider issues frame this debate about Labour’s link with the
unions. Structurally, trade union density is declining in both Britain
and Australia, so there is pressure to reduce its bloc vote.
Politically, trade unions have been demonised and marginalised since
the 1980s. In Britain, it started with Conservative prime minister
Margaret Thatcher’s assault on what she called the “enemy within” – the trade unions.
Trade
unions have been politically demonised by leaders in both the UK and
Australia, including by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. EPA/Gerry Penny
As Labor historian Nick Dyrenfurth notes,
these events have helped prime minister Tony Abbott wage a political
campaign against both the unions and Labor. However, the (unfashionable)
case for unions is still needed. As federal Labor MP Andrew Leigh notes in his book on equality, unions in Australia remain fundamental in the struggle against growing economic inequality.
Cut short by his mother’s passing, Shorten has yet to deliver his speech where he was to unveil his reform agenda. He has floated the idea
of removing the requirement for party members to be trade union
members, and reducing the fee to join the party to boost membership.
Shorten also reportedly favours
reforming the way state leaders are elected, with a 50:50 vote between
the parliamentary wing and the rank and file. Reports of the contents of
the speech also suggest greater involvement for party members in the
pre-selection process. Yet it remains unclear whether he will tackle the
union bloc vote at party conferences, which is, in effect, their power
to veto policy.
While the ALP might push to create party “supporters”, views are
mixed about the growing use of primaries to pre-select candidates. Labor
senator and factional powerbroker Kim Carr, in his Letter to Generation Next book, notes the low uptake at a trial of a primary election in Kilsyth before the Victorian state election in 2010.
The lessons from the UK are complex. Ultimately Shorten might resist
Gallop’s assertion that the ALP is either labourist or social
democratic. It is, and has always been, a mixture of a number of
traditions.
Bill Shorten is seeking to make it easier and cheaper to join the Labor Party. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Bill Shorten will announce sweeping Labor Party reforms that
empower rank and file members, rein in powerbrokers' say over
candidates and call for fewer factional bosses to be pre-selected for
the Senate.
Mr Shorten was preparing to deliver what was shaping up to
be one of the defining speeches of his leadership last week before the
sudden death of his mother, Ann.
In excerpts of the speech published before he had to
withdraw, Mr Shorten flagged changes to make it easier and cheaper to
join the party and dropping a requirement that party members also
belong to a union.
But the ALP boss was preparing to go much further in the
speech and call for changes that would please advocates of Labor reform
but which would put him offside with at least some of the factional
warlords and union powerbrokers who supported him during last year's
leadership contest with Anthony Albanese.
Mr Shorten plans to deliver the speech, which has not yet been finalised, when he returns from leave.
Drafts of the opposition leader's speech call for local
branches with more than 300 members to be given a 70 per cent say over
pre-selection for the House of Representatives.
State-based head office selection committees would have their influence reduced to a 30 per cent weighting.
Mr Shorten will also call for all pre-selections to move to a
100 per cent rank and file model in the longer term, in line with the
NSW branch.
The NSW branch of the ALP has already adopted a 100 per cent
vote for the rank and file in pre-selection, but states such as
Victoria and South Australia still have a 50-50 weighting between the
rank and file vote and head office.
Most significantly, Mr Shorten planned to call for the party
to broaden the talent pool from which it pre-selects senators. At
present, Labor's ranks in the upper house are dominated by former union
leaders, factional bosses and, particularly in NSW, former party
officials.
Queensland Labor has recently adopted rule changes that have
given party members a direct say in the pre-selection of Senate
candidates and some in the party are arguing for a similar rule to be
implemented nationally.
The Labor leader has also called in recent weeks for the
states to adopt, over time, a 50-50 leadership election model that the
federal party adopted under reforms implemented by former prime
minister Kevin Rudd.
A spokesman for Mr Shorten said the leader had set a target
of 100,000 party members - up from about 40,000 at present - and party
modernisation was needed to reach that target.
"The Opposition Leader is attending his mother's funeral
today. Unfortunately he wasn't able to deliver the speech as planned
but hopes to be in a position to do so soon. Bill's ambition is to
ensure the Labor Party is broad-based and democratic – making it easier
for people to join is the first step,'' the spokesman said.
Four shadow ministers have confirmed that Mr Shorten had
rung around to discuss the draft reform proposals with senior members
of the ALP left and right factions in the days leading up to when the
speech was due to be delivered.
It is understood that Stephen Conroy, Anthony Albanese,
David Feeney, Tanya Plibersek, Mark Butler, Penny Wong, Don Farrell,
Kim Carr and Chris Bowen were among the shadow ministers consulted.
The debate over reform to the ALP's internal structures has
been turbo-charged in the wake of the West Australian senate election,
which saw controversial former Shop, Distributive and Allied (SDA)
workers union leader Joe Bullock claim the one senate seat the party
won in that state under a factional deal worked out by the left and
right unions, while experienced senator Louise Pratt looks set to lose
her seat.
The prospect of an intervention in the WA branch by the
ALP's national office is now being openly discussed following the
disastrous result, which saw Labor's vote fall to a paltry 21 per cent,
with one shadow minister saying the intervention could either be
forced or "friendly", as it had been in NSW under Mr Rudd last year.
Another shadow minister, who asked not to be named, said the
election of Mr Bullock "emphasised everything that is wrong with the
party".
"No one thought he was that bad. We actually thought he voted Labor at least,'' the MP said.
A third shadow minister said the scale of the reform
challenge in WA was "vastly different" to other states and that changes
were essential to turn the party around in the west.
Labor elder Senator John Faulkner, national president Jenny
McAllister and Queensland Senator Joe Ludwig have all joined the push
for the party to reform itself in recent days, but the SDA's Joe de
Bruyn and the Transport Workers Union's Tony Sheldon have spoken out
against some of the reform proposals.
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…
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.
The
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.
Harking back to the glory days of Hawke and Keating might make Labor MPs and members feel good, but will it lead to anything? 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)?
Senator John Faulkner said the present system rewarded 'doing deals'. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP
Labor elder statesman John Faulkner is pushing for all Labor
senators and New South Wales upper house members to be preselected by
the party’s rank and file instead of its annual conference, to stamp out
corruption and reduce the influence of factional powerbrokers.
But
Labor’s NSW general secretary, Jamie Clements, has already publicly
opposed the plan, on the grounds it would “silence the voices of
affiliated trade union members.”
In a letter to Labor party
members in NSW last Thursday, Faulkner said the ALP must take
responsibility for the fact that its own culture made possible the kind
of corruption being exposed by the Independent Commission against
Corruption (Icac).
“The party’s culture made possible their behaviour and a confidence such behaviour would not be held to account,” he wrote.
“Our
present system rewards intrigue, trading favours and doing deals. Eddie
Obeid, Ian Macdonald or their ilk would not be able to win preselection
in a genuinely democratic process where all party members cast a vote.
Their success depended on nothing but factional anointment, they
required no support beyond the leadership of a faction,” he said.
He
wrote that the party’s rules should also be changed “to clarify and
strengthen the party’s ability to discipline and expel those found in
breach of our standards”.
But he said that without “changing the way power is distributed in our party; such commitments will not change anything”.
“Changing
the rules to include statements about integrity and ethical behaviour
while leaving power within the NSW branch concentrated in the hands of a
tiny number of factional leaders would be nothing but window dressing –
hanging new curtains while behind the curtains the house is burning.”
But
Clements immediately wrote to party members saying the plan should be
rejected on the grounds it would diminish the power of the unions in the
annual conference decision-making.
“Some commentators and party
members … are calling for senators and members of the NSW upper house,
now elected by our annual conference, to be directly elected by party
members. While I welcome reform debates, I disagree with these
proposals. Labor’s conferences matter precisely because their decisions
are binding and they elect people. Changing that would silence the
voices of affiliated trade union members and severely diminish the role
of our annual conference,” he wrote.
Faulkner’s push comes as
Labor’s leader, Bill Shorten, is suggesting an end to the rule requiring
party members in some branches to join a union, in a bid to reduce
union influence over the party.
Labor’s preselection methods were
again questioned after the ticket in the Western Australia Senate rerun,
led by the controversial rightwing union leader Joe Bullock, garnered a
record low vote for the ALP.
It is understood reform plans such
as the one proposed by Faulkner could be put to a number of state ALP
conferences before next year’s federal conference.
During his
brief return to the prime ministership, Kevin Rudd also announced
reforms to try to stamp out corruption in the NSW branch.
He
ordered the national executive to take over the branch for 30 days,
saying he had been “appalled” by the allegations aired at Icac. The
executive imposed a ban on property developers ever standing as
political candidates and ensured that 50% of the NSW administrative
committee was made up of rank-and-file members.
The "zero
tolerance of corruption" reforms include establishing independent
judicial oversight of the NSW branch of the Labor party and dissolving
the existing “disputes and credentials committee, which has been too
controlled by factions".
The proposed Faulkner reforms would take those measures further.
LABOR PARTY MUST UNDERSTAND : WE LABOR VOTERS WANT UNIONS INFLUENCE OUT OF THE PARTY
Tuesday, 8 April 2014
WAKE UP LABOR PARTY , WE DO NOT WANT UNIONS INFLUENCE IN OUR PARTY
The ALP becomes its own worst enemy in WA Senate shambles
The only surprising factor in the stories regarding Joe
Bullock, who held the number one position on the ALP Senate ticket at
Saturday’s Western Australian Senate byelection, was that they took so
long…
Factional dealings saw Labor senator Louise Pratt demoted in
favour of conservative union heavyweight Joe Bullock in the ALP’s WA
Senate ticket. AAP/Alan Porritt
The only surprising factor in the stories
regarding Joe Bullock, who held the number one position on the ALP
Senate ticket at Saturday’s Western Australian Senate byelection, was
that they took so long to break into wide circulation.
Bullock, who was elected
to the Senate on Saturday, managed to gain pole position on the ALP
ticket around a year ago, in the lead-up to the September 2013 federal
election.
As part of a deal which saw left candidate Simone McGurk from Unions WA (the state version of the Australian Council of Trade Unions) gain pre-selection
for the state seat of Fremantle, Bullock, from the right-wing Shop
Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (SDA), was able to
leap-frog incumbent senator Louise Pratt, who is backed by the
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.
Pratt took the number one position in 2007, which resulted in then-senator Ruth Webber losing her seat. Her fate in the byelection is unclear as counting continues.
As a result of the deal, senator Mark Bishop, a former ally of Bullock’s and the traditional SDA candidate, did not seek pre-selection in 2013, having correctly viewed a third ALP seat as being unwinnable.
Pratt made her disappointment with the demotion known when she released the following post, which remains on Facebook:
Facebook
Click to enlarge
While the deal gained notice in February 2012 during the
pre-selection process for the 2013 state election – and again in April
2013 when the WA candidates for the federal Senate were finalised – it
remained a relatively low-key story. And it would have remained so, if
not for the need to hold a new Senate election in Western Australia.
As the weekend’s results show, as long as the ALP allows union
heavyweights to dominate the pre-selection process and nominate
candidates at odds with the views of the general membership – and in
this case, all left-leaning progressives in the electorate – they will
continue to alienate voters.
Senators on the hustings
Senate positions are often provided to heavyweights in both major
parties. They are able to focus on internal party politics and policy
rather than the constituency work required by members of the House of
Representatives.
Ordinarily, Senate candidates don’t attract much attention in
election campaigns, unless they hold a ministry or shadow ministry
position. But ALP apparatchiks must have had their hearts in their
mouths ever since the possibility of a re-election for six Western
Australian Senate position was raised. They knew what an electoral
liability Bullock could be.
Pratt, however, has a relatively high profile in many segments of the
Western Australian electorate as a result of her time in state
parliament. She has a strong personal following due to her support for same-sex marriage and her calls for action on climate change.
While Pratt, who holds her own when dealing with media, was seen out
and about on the hustings, The West Australian newspaper had to lure out Bullock, who managed to keep a very low profile during the first weeks of the campaign.
However, the focus shifted to Bullock in the last two weeks of the
campaign as details of his conviction for unlawful assault in 1996 were revealed. This was followed by the release of a recording of a Q&A session after a speech to the Dawson Society, a Christian group, in November last year.
The recording highlighted Bullock’s socially conservative views, his
general disdain for progressives within the ALP and his sympathies with
his old university friend Tony Abbott, whom he claimed had the potential to be a “very good prime minister”.
Bullock was also forced to front the media to apologise for comments he made about Pratt’s sexuality (she is openly gay) with Pratt by his side.
Bullock’s views no surprise to the ALP
Going into this election, the ALP was unable to offer the electorate
anything by way of new policies or funding as the results of the Senate
re-election would not lead to their winning government or even gaining
the balance of power in the Senate. As a result, the ALP encouraged
voters to consider the election as a referendum on the Abbott government.
The ALP can’t be held be responsible for flight MH370 dominating the news, the Greens using Scott Ludlam’s viral speech in the Senate as a springboard for a strong campaign, or Clive Palmer’s spending spree. But they have no-one to blame but themselves for the Bullock debacle.
On Saturday, the lack of trust
with which Bullock is viewed internally was on display. Suggestions
that he couldn’t be relied upon not to jump ship once in the Senate and
could turn independent at some point during his six year term were
raised.
The counting so far shows the ALP’s primary vote has dipped by 4.8%
from its September 2013 result to 21.8%. Pratt did manage to put a bit
of pressure back on Bullock when he was forced to wait while she voted below the line, preferencing herself first.
If Pratt does manage to get over the line, it will likely be as a
result of her own personal following among ALP voters who voted below
the line and the preferences of a number of left-leaning minor parties,
who positioned her well above the other ALP and Liberal candidates.
Bill Shorten should use the ALP’s poor results in Western Australia as a starting point for serious reform within the party. AAP/Tim Clarke
Reform or wither
Union power over pre-selection can be limited. John Smith was able to
instigate reform in the British Labour Party, introducing the One Member One Vote method to determine pre-selection in 1993, thereby reducing the power of the unions.
The ALP threw away the opportunity for reform when they failed to implement in full the 2010 Bracks-Faulkner-Carr Review
recommendation of a tiered system of party primaries for the selection
of candidates, which would have limited the influence of unions.
Paul Howes,
the high-profile former boss of the Australian Workers' Union, gifted
the ALP an opportunity with his recent comments that the relationship
between the ALP and unions should be severed as it was damaging both
parties.
Former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke lent strength to the idea that the relationship needs to be reviewed on the weekend, as did former Labor senator Chris Evans, who admitted the Bullock scandal had harmed the Labor vote.
With the federal government releasing
the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into Union Governance
and Corruption, things are only going to get worse for Labor.
Bill Shorten should use the ALP’s poor results in Western Australia as a starting point for serious reform within the party. It is expected that he will announce that the rule that all members of the ALP must be also be members of a union will be scrapped.
Until the ALP embrace reform, it’s difficult to see how they’ll break this pattern of self-harm.
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