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Year End 2002 | |
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Interview: Taking Stock Bad Boss: Pushing the Envelope Unions: The Year That Was Republic: Still Fighting International: Global Ties, Global Binds Politics: Turning Green Technology: Unions Online 2002 Industrial: The Past Is Before Us Economics: Market Insecurity Review: Shooting for Sanity Poetry: The PM's Christmas Message Culture: Zanger's Sounds of Summer
The Soapbox The Locker Room Bosswatch Predictions
Terror Australis
 Refugee ReviewRepresentative RepresentativesMen Only?Dry ArgumentVale: Phil Berrigan
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The Soapbox Tread Carefully - Very Carefully
************* Vindicating as it may be for the ALP to find itself in control every State and Territory parliament in the country at the end of 2002, the ALP should not kid itself that all is well within the labour tent. In particular, 2002 has seen cracks appear within labor ranks that if ignored have the potential to keep the party out of power for a substantial period of time. At the Federal level there is a clear and present danger that John Howard will continue to outmanourvre the ALP in 2003 and 2004 over the core issues of asylum seekers, border protection, and the national response to September 11. After Carman Lawrence's principled defection to the back bench, it is also clear that the ALP cannot release policies that can both overcome the Liberal Party and satisfy a key labor constituency. If Simon Crean appears uncomfortable at his predicament, it is for the very good reason that he is in fact forked to borrow a term from the game of chess. The first prong of the fork agitating Crean's person is that he cannot move far enough to the right to satisfy what the ALP perceives to be majority Australian views on security and border protection. The second prong pressing Crean is the knowledge that he cannot move any further to the right without alienating important sections of the ALP's traditional supporter base. Howard has Crean (the king) in check on border protection, the war in Iraq and the national response to September 11, and unless Crean can come up with a creative and principled solution for getting out of check, he will lose a large swathe of traditional ALP voters (Crean's queen) to parties and politicians offering more principled alternatives. This particular fork is not new to the ALP, being the same fork that skewered Kim Beasley in the November 2001 election. Unfortunately for the ALP the cracks in labor unity opened up in 2002 relate to issues borader than border protection and the national interest. In particular, the Cunningham by-election result should be causing alarm bells to jangle in the highest reaches of both the ALP and the trade union movement. While the by-election result may not be the watershed in Australian politics suggested by some, the fact that a candidate from a party to the left of the ALP won a safe Labor seat is a portent of a future that may be uncomfortable for the ALP. Amongst other things, Cunningham reveals a vulnerability in the ALP to ideas emanating from the left. For this election result was not just about the arrogance of the ALP hierarchy in imposing an outside candidate on Wollongong, nor about the alienation of local activists and union footsloggers from the Labor campaign, nor just about local environmental issues. While local grievances were important, Cunningham also reflects the substantial disenchantment felt by many people with the neo-liberal economic agenda enthusiastically embraced by the ALP in recent years. This disenchantment is likely to result in the Greens picking up additional seats in the Senate, drawing part of the vote from disaffected ALP voters and part from the self-destructing Democrats. More interestingly, the Greens may also pressure the ALP in traditionally safe Lower House seats, creating a genuine contest for primary votes between itself and the ALP. While Crean may bear a toothy grin after the Victorian State election noting that the Greens got 10% of the vote but did not win a seat, the proportional representation in the Senate will deliver seats to the Greens, not to the ALP. Every Green electoral advance heightens the perception that the Greens represent a valid alternative for disillusioned voters. More importantly, as the Greens expose voters to a different suite of policies from the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum policies of the ALP and the Liberal Party, a loyal Green constituency will emerge that is likley to contain a significant number of formerly loyal ALP voters. The ALP may suddenly find itself faced with the challenge of changing its rhetoric and policy to retain this emerging Green constituency, or of finding new voters out in the notoriously fickle mortgage belts. This is an issue broader than Simon Crean's leadership, broader than the sterile debate about union representation in the party, and broader than the debate about reforming the factions. Voters are realising that the ALP has few progressive policies in its policy cupboard. Further, apart from Beasley's and then Crean's deliberate policy of not releasing policy, it is difficult to imagine that when policies are released, they will be progressive. The paucity of redistributive economic policy and the lack of strong statement on social issues translates into the valid perception that the ALP no longer stands for the things it used to stand for, or for the things that traditional supporters want it to stand for. Worse than this is the deepening suspicion that not even the ALP itself knows what it stands for. Even for a true believer it is hard to believe in a party that finds it so difficult to condemn the forthcoming war against Iraq, and that cannot unequivocally reject detention centres as a solution for asylum seekers. It is also hard to believe in a party that cannot make one promise, even a promise in the devalued currency of opposition, that would re-evidence its basic commitment to social democracy. Just as current policy settings are not inspiring, from certain perspectives the track record of the party when last in Government does not inspire. It is hard to feel confident in the party that privatised Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, and a host of other well run and profitable state owned businesses. It is hard to be a true believer in the party that introduced non-union collective agreements (enterprise flexibility agreements) into the industrial relations system, and introduced the principle of enterprise bargaining designed specifically to hit at the ability of unions to organise across industry. Perhaps the final straw is watching Pru Goward and John Howard outflank the ALP on the issue of paid maternity leave. Given current policy, and the track record of the party when last in Government, it is not surprising that voters are expressing their disappointment with the ALP at the ballot box and voting Green. Disrupting the factional balance The ALP should be warned that these trends are capable of destabilising the balance between the left and right of the party, and with that, compromising the ability of the ALP to win government. The modern settlement of ideological differences within the ALP seems to rest on cross party acceptance of the proposition that leftist policies represent electoral suicide, and that only the right can win power for the party. The left surrender to this argument primarily because they lack the intestinal fortitude of the right in mustering numbers, but also because they have a profound if naive hope that once in government the ALP might implement progressive policy. The Federal election and the Cunningham by-election together present a challenge to this inter-factional truce. After the Federal election it is clear that the ALP has been outmanoeuvred by the sleaze and opportunism of John Howard's Liberal Government over the core issues of asylum seekers, border protection, and the national response to September 11. It is also clear that the ALP with its insipid and timorous response to these issues will not necessarily be able to overcome the Liberal Party to win the next election or the election after that. The right wing of the ALP with its fundamentally conservative view of the electorate has essentially been outflanked by Liberal Party on a range of core social and economic issues not the least of which was asylum seekers. That anyone should be surprised by this, let alone the NSW Right, is in itself surprising. At the insistence of the right of the ALP, the ALP has long since abandoned any pretence of offering leadership of the left. The result has been a 20 year vacuum in the public articulation or defence of ideas alternative to the vapid form of pro-market managerialism that defines the modern Labor Party. However, the ALP did not just follow opinion polls, make political decisions by reference to right-wing radio hosts and polls, or innocently track the electorate through its journey to the right. Rather, through an absence of leadership at the highlest levels and through its connivance in the ridicule of active social democracy, the ALP has facilitated the emergence of an electorate primed to support conservative business and social agendas. This phenomenon can also be observed in the ALP's attitude to the union movement. In relation to the unions, the ALP acts like a man embarrassed to recognise less successful family members in front of his new associates. This is particularly the case when the unions are agitating on an issue, or a Liberal Minister asks a question about the relationship between the party and the unions in Parliament. Without alternative ideas to balance the neo-liberal agenda of the ALP, the traditional conservatism of the Liberal Party and the Australian media, of course the electorate has shifted to the right. The ALP has through its silence and connivance in the assault on social democracy helped produce the right wing electorate that will keep on voting for the Liberal Party. No need for a split The Federal election and the Cunningham by-election together represent a watershed in the life of the ALP, because together they stand for the proposition that the ALP cannot counter the Liberal Party with strategies that would take the party further to the right without losing support on its left flank. However, despite this conundrum, there is no talk of a split within the party over ideology because ideological differences are essentially a dead letter within the party. The NSW Right has won the numbers battle, and with that the policy victory over the left. The modern settlement of ideological differences within the ALP leaves the party with a dead heart when it comes to the debate and promulgation of alternative ideas. This is one of the reasons why the movement towards the Greens is occurring totally outside the dead heart of the ALP, beyond the control of the party structure, and beyond the sterile internal debates on party reform. What is happening to the ALP can best be described as seepage, being a gradual leeching of support away from the ALP towards the next best alternative, being the Greens. If Cunningham stands for anything by itself, it stands for the proposition that years of ALP betrayal of progressive causes and of its traditional supporter base is coming home to roost. It also stands for the proposition that despite the pre-eminence in the ALP of the policy agendas of the neo-liberal NSW Right, the right cannot deliver power to the party. Most particularly, Cunningham contains the first intimation that the understanding between the right and left of the ALP is beginning to break down as the broad left begins to count the cost of years of self-denying loyalty to the ALP. Where does all this leave decent ALP members, the left factions, and union leaders? Genuine people must now decide whether the ALP can be redeemed to social democracy, or whether the party has moved so far to the right in respect of economic and social policy that it is lost to its traditional progressive support bases. This is a serious question, being based in both structural and ideological concerns. In a structural sense the percentage of party funding raised from the business sector has become increasingly important to the overall funding of the ALP. The fact is the corporate dollar provides the ALP executive with a funding stream that gives it immunity and independence from local ALP branches and from the union movement. Obligations are owed by the executive, but they are not owed to traditional ALP supporters. This is not rocket science or conspiracy theory, because you only have to look at the policy cupboard of the ALP to understand how reticent the ALP is to adopt policy that would inflame the passions of the various business and farm lobbies. The Wran Review captured the disillusionment of ALP members with the party. Time and again the party faithful lamented the fact that the branch structure of the ALP has been all but bypassed as a meaningful place from which to engage in political debate and policy formation. Real policy in the ALP is tightly controlled by the executive level of the party, and is based on the research of consultants, focus groups and opinion polling all paid for with business donations. Trade unionists, environmentalists, and people of the left are naive to imagine that the ALP can re-embrace policies that would infringe upon the vital relationships formed between the party executive and the business sector, for dollars buy policy outcomes, like they buy anything else. Why be in the party if policy is determined by business councils and industry groups, developers, news polls, deal-doing factional barons disassociated from real labor people, and bureaucrats? Why have a living branch structure and any semblance of internal democracy if individual party members are irrelevant to the process of policy formulation and legislative outcome? Tread carefully ALP, Tread Very Carefully With a valid extra-ALP left capable of gaining 15% to 20% of the vote in the Senate and capable of winning traditionally safe labor seats in the House of Representatives, what will happen to the rump of the ALP? What decency remains to distinguish the ALP from the Liberal Party? With clearer lines of demarcation drawn between the left and the right, voters inclined to vote liberal may well decide to vote for a real Liberal instead of a right wing ALP liberal like Mark Latham, a man who has spent his profesional life trouncing the left, trashing trade unions, and touting hair brained schemes like, for example, his scheme for sanitising capitalism by forking out tax payers money to buy shares for the poor. The Cunningham by-election result should be a clarion call to the leadership of the ALP to address the anger and resentment of a sizeable minority of the electorate who have had a gutful of the right wing and pro-business ALP agenda. The ALP must quickly re-learn that despite the contempt of the pragmatists for the broader left, the party needs the left to maintain any possibility of winning government. For as soon as the left realises that it does not need the ALP to gain Parliamentary representation, the ALP will cease to be a realistic alternative party of government. However, do not expect any action from the ALP leadership even from the freedom of opposition, as the party receives too much funding from business sources to be able to refocus its ideological trajectory. The last party conference showed as much. All we can expect from the ALP is a rearranging of the deck chairs - goodbye Mr Crean - and for more equivocation on important issues. The ALP is dead and buried as a progressive political party. Party faithful and the union movement should understand that the argument is not between Mr Howard and social democracy, but between two forms of liberalism, the self serving conservative liberalism of Mr Howard, and the self serving neo-liberalism of the ALP. The ALP left, decent ALP members, and the trade union movement should not pause to regret the confusion being felt in the Federal ALP, but should be angry at the party executive for stealing the party from under their noses. The union movement and the broader left would be far better off with a vigorous independent non-ALP voice in Parliament than continuing to live on its knees inside the ALP. Further, the sooner there is a non-ALP left in Parliament, the sooner the ALP might find itself embarrassed back into some kind of decency, or at least into a better functioning and more equal left-right coalition . But if the ALP is beyond decency, then the ALP is truly lost, and this is as it should be. For while the right wing of the party may be master of all it surveys, it is also an empty shell. An ideology free zone and the hollow man of Australian politics.
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