Interview

Ms Plibersek Goes To Canberra

Interview with Peter Lewis

The new MP for Sydney talks about her new job, new ideas and why she won't be writing a book about them.

	Tanya Plibersek

So what have you been doing so far as a Member of Parliament?

Parliament's been sitting for most of the year and this is the first part of the year I've had back in the electorate. I'm the deputy chair of the Caucus Living Standards and Economics Committee, so one of the thing's I've been doing is organising the visit that committee will take around the country in the first half the year.

What does that committee get up to?

There's five caucus committees that reflect the structure of the five national policy committees. They were set up after the 1996 election defeat: there's Living Standards and Economics, National Security and Trade, Social Policy, Government and Service Delivery and Infrastructure, Regional and Rural Development. There's also the Status of Women Committee. They have responsibility for a number of portfolio areas; for instance, Living Standards and Economics has responsibility for Industry, Employment and Education.

The aims of the committee are twofold. They're the first sounding board for legislation before it goes to the whole of Caucus and a position is formed. The other task is coming up with some new ideas and especially now, a long time out from an election, as free-flowing a discussion as possible; not just within the Caucus, but going out and talking to unions, academics, community groups, business about how they see the issues we face.

What issues have you been tackling?

We have three visits coming up over the next couple of months, to Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. They're focussing mainly on eduction, jobs and industry development - the core of our committee's brief. So we've been organising who we will talk to at those visits and we've also had as many groups as possible coming in and talking to us when we're in Canberra, some of the ANU economists, people with particular expertise in retirement income, changes to the superannuation environment. It's really interesting and a great opportunity to talk to people who are experts in their field, who we would not always come into contact with otherwise. My main purpose is to get as many perspectives on the issue as I can, although very soon we'll have to put down on paper some of the solutions we're coming up with -- producing discussion papers for Caucus and the National Policy committees. So we're part of the policy melting pot.

Have their been any ideas that have been presented to the committee, that you've gone "wow, that's amazing"?

I feel like every time we talk to someone that there is something that is useful and interesting; even people who I don't expect to agree with contribute something to that discussion of ideas. What I'm really enjoying is the frank discussions around the table that accompany the consultations. I mean, we sit in the chamber of Parliament and get bagged for the fact that we've got a backbencher and a frontbencher who've written books recently and we get called a book club and a reading group, but it feels to me like a really exciting period when we've got people who are having those arguments, to the extent that there are quite wide differences of opinion at some times. But that is more healthy than the situation you have in the Coalition where John Howard comes up with a pathetic preamble and no-one in the party room has the chutzpah to say it's a joke.

What's your take on the Latham/Tanner debate?

I think it's really healthy to have ideas debated as widely as possible. But I guess I feel to an extent there's nothing new in the world. I think that a lot of what Mark's saying is what the left has been talking about for decades: the focus on community, grassroots politics - that's what the left of the Labor Party has always been doing. I think that our historical relationships with groups outside the Labor Party like the peace movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the environment, the feminist movement. Our links with community feminist organisations have been about promoting grassroots activism around sexual assault services, domestic violence services; that sort of activism within the community and collective responsibility, the political pressure that the group working on a particular issue, all that stuff that Latham is talking about is what we've been doing for some time.

Albeit, with a greater emphasis on the State as the deliverer of the services ...

Sure, but that is actually one of the criticisms that can be made of Latham. he uses the example of the parents of the kids with learning difficulties and talks about terrific it is for the parents to take responsibility for this. And it is vital in a situation like that to empower the parents as much as you can. But it is also fair to say that the State owes a responsibility to those kids and their parents. We don't want to return to a situation of voluntarism where individual parents may not have the skills or the patience or the time or the financial ability to look after their children in the ways that would benefit them the most. And I don't know if it's an ideal situation to necessarily throw the responsibility back on them. I don't want to go back to a situation where families -- and that means women -- are being told its their responsibility all over again. We fought pretty hard to say that there are areas like this that deserve professional service, we don't want to return to a situation where we say: anyone can do this, because that devalues caring work as highly skilled work.

So if Tanya Plibersek were to sit down and right her book on the future for Labor, what would be your central thesis?

I don't have any book planned. I don't even imagine that I have a grand plan that all of the things we are concerned with fall into ..

Does that say as much about grand plans? It seems to me this search for a grand plan to solve all the problems is itself problematic...

That's why I think the whole "Third Way" tag-line is problematic. You end up having to fit all your observations about the world into a book. You have to take an ahistorical approach to fit your vision of the future into your model. The desire of any author is to imagine that they are the first person to have ever thought of their schema means they have to ignore the fact that nothing is ever new. In lots of ways what's called the Third Way in Britain, is what we were already doing in Australia, admittedly sometimes imperfectly.

One thing that has changed for someone form the Left since the end of the Cold War is the clear ideological differences between the ALP factions. Having entered Parliament with the Cold War well and truly over, what does it mean to be Left?

I think that's an issue not just for Parliamentarians, but a generations of young people. To say to the average young person now that so-and-so used to be a dual ticket holder, it means nothing to them. It doesn't mean they are ignorant, it just means they didn't grow up in an environment of paranoia. They probably don't think they're being bugged either. The level of fear and suspicion is lower than in the past, but I still feel there are ideological differences between the Left and the Right of the Labor Party. I don; think they are insurmountable and, if people behave properly, they can be worked out in line with the democratic rules of the party.

Which are the differences that inform you?

I suppose they are based on recent historical positions that different groups have taken. In NSW the most obvious is electricity privatisation. I think that people lined up pretty much factionally within the parliamentary party, the union break-up was a little bit different, but there were only a few people in the political wing of the party who didn't follow the factional line. Historically, there's things like selling uranium to France, privatising the Commonwealth Bank, the position we took on sending troops to Iraq, the left position on East Timor -- which is only now being realised as the appropriate position -- French testing in the Pacific. There are a number of issues like that that throughout my political awareness where the Left has taken a position which is much more in line with my views and that is what made my position clear from an early age.

What about now in Canberra? What are the issues on which there would be a difference between Left and Right?

The policy divisions are now a lot less than they have been historically. But that's because I think we're winning many of the moral arguments and I think that if you have a look at the last National Platform after the 1996 election loss, is a much more left wing platform than we had for a long time. that's because we had so much input from rank and file party members and rank and file union members. I think it more accurately reflects the attitudes of the people who join the Labor Party. It was much more closer to what I think are out core Labor values, than the platform that had evolved beforehand..

So what are our core Labor values?

I always find it hard to talk about without sounding like a wanker, but: equality, fairness, access to all the necessities of life, education, shelter, food, health care. there's all the definitional arguments about equality -- absolute equality or equality of opportunity. John Howard and Pauline Hanson say they believe in equality as well and what that means to them is different to what it means to me, which is a high basic standard of living for every person in this country.

Let's talk about the factions, there are some people in Sussex Street who think the factions are no longer relevant. Do you agree with that?

People keep telling me that the factions are no longer relevant, I don't know whether that's the case. What worries me is that "power abhors a vacuum". What replaces factions? I don't believe it will just become one big, back-slapping collective. I think if you lose a structure which is based on factions, what will replace it is one based on warlords and that frightens me. I think that we're in a much better position when decisions are made collectively rather than individual people acting on individual whims. I feel more comfortable with a system where people are empowered to negotiate on behalf of the group they represent and they are required to report back to the group on the decision that they make. I think you end up with more honest and fairer outcomes in that structure.

I think both sides of this debate are arguing about their ideal systems. My ideal is a working factional system based on policy differences. I don't know if we've had that system in recent times, but that's an ideal collective system. The other ideal that is being posed by the people who say the factions are dead, involved individual people making moral decisions on policy issues and being promoted on talent. I've got no problem with that, I think it would be a lovely thing but, call me cynical, but I don't think that's what will replace the current factions.

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  Issue 9 contents

»	Public Speaks: We Are Not Monsters!
»	Qantas to Dump Aussie Accents
»	Carr�s Faction Call Music to Costa�s Ears
»	But Thumbs Down to Small Business Labor...
»	Blow for Reith's Anti-Unionism
»	Un-Reconstructed Unionists on Study Tour
»	Unionists to Celebrate May Day
»	Tanner to Bragg with Billy

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Social Audit: Where's the Left?
»	Piers, Piers, Piers
»	Conspiracy of Silence?
»	Y2K plus VCR Equals SCAM

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