Interview

Latham: Leading With The Chin

Interview with Peter Lewis

Labor's heretical voice talks about trade unions and how they'll survive in the land of the Third Way.

	Mark Latham: Leading With the Chin

It's nearly 12 months since you published Civilising Global Capital. In that time you've become a backbencher and been accused of being a Labor rat. Any regrets?

I think raising ideas and promoting debate are pretty important for the Party at this time in its history. It's probably a watershed time when social democratic parties are facing up to the realities of globalisation in the information age and trying to keep themselves relevant in terms of policy and electoral appeal and in terms of their long term survival. So to be part of that process is important but the ins and outs of shadow ministries and what people say about you don't matter as much as those longer term questions and participation in the long term political debate.

Do you think the reaction was against the ideas or the way they came into the public domain?

I think the reaction's been positive. I get continuing correspondence from students, Young Labor activists, academics, bureaucrats, people generally interested in public policy who are quite complimentary about my book and what's followed from it. You know the reaction I think is 70 per cent positive, the other 30 per cent, perhaps adverse internal party reaction and from people with a traditional left-wing perspective, who might see, my views as threatening. there's a lot of institutions now including the big centralised industrial unions are under threat and of course they are going to feel threatened.

The media and the conservative side of politics have, rather than engaging in your ides, put you up on the pedestal as the labor heretic. Has that detracted from the process of getting this debate going? You've been cast as an oppositionist rather than someone with a positive agenda.

My agenda's positive. Its based on ideas about the reform of public policy. Obviously the media looks for the points of public conflict. But there's a mixture -- some people report ideas and policy matters, others stick to the conflict and try to personalise everything That's just part of the process and in the end, the conflict stuff gets lost in the wash and the thing that's left is what the ideas are about and that's the sort of public policy debate the ALP is now engaged in.

Your notion of the "Third Way" has been described as a cross between the Second Coming and the Fourth Dimension. If you accept that the world is becoming increasingly complex, why the need for the 'one big concept' like the Third Way?

Well, politics is about presentation, politics is about applying principles to new public policy challenges and the Third Way is part of that process. It's a broad methodology of how to address these political issues as well as having a lot of detail about what it might it stand for in the work of government. It's probably not desirable to have one narrow approach in policy, but I think the Third Way is a very broad project which avoids the problems of dogma and fixed ideologies.

But what's the difference between the Third Way and pure political pragmatism?

The Third Way is driven by this idea of triangulation, the sort of Hegelian theory of history. Points of conflict are resolved with a new way of thinking, a new ideology, new policies. So it has a theory of history attached to it which is a long way removed from short-term political pragmatism. It's about thinking through the public policy consequences of things like globalisation and the information age, but doing it in a way which is consistent with traditional Labor Party ideals about a good and fair society. You have to be pragmatic and idealistic in politics. You've got to be pragmatic because you want to win election; but you can marry this with good ideals and good thinking for the longer term. That's a big part of the way the Third Way has evolved in Britain and the United States as well as other European countries.

Of course, some people would argue that the Third Way has always been what the Australian Labor Party pursued and that Britain and the US are adapting what was already happening here.

There's elements of that in it. The Third Way has to be understood at two policy levels. First, as there's an ongoing tension between the role of government and the role of economic markets. And for a century we've been arguing the right balance of policy to address that tension. But now with internationalisation, there's a need for changing the balance. The Third Way argues that you're better with education investments than industry handouts, you're better off skilling a nation to cope with globalisation than artificially propping up old industries which will be wiped out by technology in any case. And you're also better off moving some of your national economic regulation to international forums like European Community, APEC, NAFTA and the like. So Third Way engages in that debate, which is important.

The Third Way is also about the tension between global economics and local communities. Tony Blair in Britain has said that people on the Left have made two big mistakes this century. The first was that they didn't match up responsibilities with rights in the welfare system and they made a big mistake in replacing mutual provisions of social services with big centralised government departments. You are trying to rebuild social trust, cohesive, the thing called social capital by these ideologies of mutuality and devolution. Trying to get people more involved with service delivery and provision at a local level. That's a very important debate as well. I mean, social issues define themselves through mutualism, through the ideals of good community. but we've sort of lost that through the course of this century and the Third Way is trying to rebuild that strain within socialist thinking.

Of course, similar rhetoric is being used by the Howard Government. How's their notion of mutual obligation different to your's.

They put more emphasis on the responsibility of government; to properly fund education and training services. A genuine reciprocal responsibility policy calls on the individual to exercise the responsibilities of effort and good citizenship to make the best of government services; but clearly Howard with Work for the Dole and Read for the Dole is not providing the government responsibility of funding to make those services work.

Is it fair to say that you believe the process of globalisation is inevitable and the role of the State in a country like Australia is to work out the best way of looking after its citizens with in that? Or do you take a view that state's can shape the way globalisation evolves over the next period.

A bit of both. I think government has a role in shaping the social impact of globalisation, the impact that it has on individuals and communities; but on the economic front governments won't be able to roll back and reverse the process of globalisation. That's not possible. What governments have to learn to do is accept that these processes are driven by technology and economic changes that no national government can turn back or ultimately resist. But government that adapts its policy approach will be able to ameliorate or modify some of the impact that those changes are having on lifestyle opportunity, local communities and other aspects of a good capacity.

But do we have to accept that the dollar drives all? That the debate over the power of global capital has been run and won?

I think we need to think of policy making as trying to build a virtuous circle. A strong trusting society actually strengthens economic performance and there's a lot of research and analysis to show that's the case. A strong trusting society makes it easier for government to get about its work, that the people support collective and cooperative institutions, which is what government ultimately should be. And that a strong society produces a strong economy and a strong government. So I'm interested in that virtuous cycle and the thing that has been downgraded this century is the strength of society itself.

Government and economic markets have grown and are doing many more things than they did a century ago; it's society that's been down-sized and building bonds of public trust and mutuality has to be an important part of social democratic thinking in the current time. I don't see any great conflict between a strong society and a good economy; they can be mutually reinforcing if its based on notions of social trust and cooperation.

What role do you see trade unions playing in this virtuous cycle?

Trade unions started out as mutual organisations helping to build trust as well as representation in the workplace. My criticism on modern trade unionism is that its become too big, centralised and bureaucratic. I'm more a fan of workplace unions. The process of amalgamations we've seen over the last decade was the wrong call: for unions to get bigger and more centralised at a time when the workplace was getting smaller and more disaggregated across the economy.

So would you advocate atomised unions only covering particular workplaces?

I don't mind federated structures; to have other representatives doing research and national policy work, but I'd rather see the weight of union control and organisation at the workplace. Then if those workplace unions want to contribute resources for a federated union structure at a national level -- which is ultimately responsible to those workplace unions. I think that would be the best way to go.

Those ideas would raise major issues with the ALP in terms of its funding base and membership base ..

Well it won't raise as many issues if we continue to lose union membership at the current rate and industrial unions go the way of the dinosaur in 30 or 40 years time. I support mutual organisations in the workplace and other parts of society and the best mutual organisation in industrial relations is a strong and effective trade union which wins the support of its members based on the relevance to their needs and the quality of the services provided. I just think that happens better at a workplace level. if the ALP is going to have unions to rely on in the future, we've got to move away from the centralised union model.

What about the centralised wage-fixing model?

I think it defies the disaggregated,. diverse nature of the new economy. You won't be able to go back to centralised wage fixing. the key equity policy is to have a strong, indexed minimum wage in Australia to make sure that no-one at the bottom of the labour market is falling behind the rest of the country in their earnings. But you won't be able to have centralised wage-fixing for all workers. But for those on the minimum wage -- and we now have a federal minimum wage -- its very important to keep their earnings moving forward as the economy continues to grow.

Do you support the notion of a Living Wage? That wages should be based on needs and not capacity to pay?

How that's determined will very much be a product of history. I think you'd need a combination of both a capacity of business to pay in a competitive economic environment where productivity matters and provision of a decent living standard for all Australian workers. I think you need to have some combined consideration of those factors and that points to an ongoing role for the Industrial Relations Commission in Australia. But I don't think we'll ever go back to the Harvester Judgment or fully centralised national wage fixing in this country.

Do you see over time wage levels being forced down so what blue collar workers can still compete on a global playing field? Or does a decision have to be made at some point that we opt out of certain industries?

We're better off with a high-wage, high-skill economy and that means recognising that traditional low-skill manufacturing work is not going to be consistent with those high-wage objectives. Improved investments and outcomes in education are going to become much more important than hanging onto old industries what in any case are only ever going to produce low-skill, low-wage outcomes.

What role do you see for unions in the context of extending your notion of social capital.

They're a very important mutual organisation that can build cooperation between people. union s should see themselves with those goals in mind and should be supported by laws promoting collective bargaining in the workplace as a much better option than employment contracts. If there was a way oft outlawing individual employment contracts, then I'd be supportive of it. But I don't about the constitutionality of restricting the freedom of the individual to have an employment contract; but generally we should do whatever we can in industrial relations law for collective arrangements as opposed to contracts. A good society, I argue, is good for the workplace, because it will be base of productive and competitive economic outcomes. People will do a lot better in the workplace when they cooperate compared to competition within the enterprise amongst workers

I understand in your local electorate you've been doing some work with Peter Botsman to put your theories into practice. Tell us about that.

It's about a group of parents of disabled children getting together and formed what amounts to a families cooperative. They run it, its self-governing. They've got government funding and a bit of their fundraising to buy in the services and experts and staff they need, but its community self-governance eat work, with the aim of delivering better services to the parents of disabled children. Its very important in terms of the service, but also in fostering the bonds of trust before the parents involved. they've got support groups, friendships, learning the habits of cooperation, which is much better than is they just placed their children in institutionalised government childcare.

What do you think of Tanner's book?

It's good, I generally praise the book, its a step in the right direction, especially someone from the left-wing factional background. Its going to be an important contribution to the debate. I think there are some areas where he could think more creatively about community building and social capital but generally, he's done a very good job.

Where do you see the fault-lines between his ideas and your own?

Only at the margins, the central direction is pretty much in common and we're only arguing at the margin about some of the policy detail and emphasis you might carry in practise.

Finally on factions in the ALP. If the ALP factions are going to be built around new ideas what are the ideas they will be built around?

Factions aren't built around ideas. Factions are built around personalities and patronage. Factions, to survive, have to find a way to become more relevant to these debates. A lot of ideology -- what it means to be right-wing or left-wing in the ALP has changed,. I mean, some right-wingers have now got the same economic policies as left-wingers because they want to resist globalisation and go back to things like so-called interventionist industry policy, strategic trade policy, a lot of those ideologies are blurring.

So does the line become between the engaged and the disengaged?

The line is somewhat generational. It's those who think they'll be in politics 20 years from now having to deal with these realities, opposed to those who can just ignore them for the present and go back to some of the old stuff. I think that's one of the dividends in the Labor Party, but whether that leads to a new division, new conflicts, new ideas and new factional ideologies, all of that is very unformed at the moment. We mightn't see the results for another generation or so.

How confident are you that the policy issues raised by yourself and Tanner will be addressed before the next election?

Well they are being addressed through the policy review. And in many ways they are irresistible, they just won't go away. They are policy issues the party must face up to . You can face up to them sensibly and have an open policy debate and review or you can try to ignore them and one day the electorate will just say: "you ignored all those issues, you've become irrelevant and you're out of business".

Haven't they already done that?

We've lost two federal elections in a row, but we're not out of business. Clearly the next election is the important one for us where we have to get back in. And having relevant policies, contemporary economic and social concerns, is a vital part of it. That's why the Party is alive and we're a lot better off having these debates than putting our heads in the sand and becoming more like the Liberal Party which has no debates, writes no books and ends up looking like an ostrich.

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  Issue 10 contents

»	Vizard Offers Unions Cheap Computers, But Is It a Pup?
»	Y2K Crashes Bank Holidays
»	Carr Says Thank You To Union Movement
»	Crew Saved by Message in a Bottle
»	Unions to take on Qantas Over Foreign Jobs
»	No Training on Coat-Hanger Sparks Job Fears
»	Council's Hypocrisy Sparks Green Ban Call
»	Shoddy Editor Sparks May Day Confusion
»	STOP PRESS: Employers Bid to Scrap ANZAC Day Fails. For Now

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Not So Wild About Bragg
»	Faction Talk Must Be Broader
»	A Bouquet from the Bush
»	Help a Student Pass!

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