We need to talk about Labor. Why we didn’t really lose the last election because of Rupert Murdoch, or Clive Palmer, or the Stop Adani train, or the overfull manifesto, or even the Tax scares.
We lost the last election because the electorate does not trust Labor. It’s not that we have to convince voters we are good economic managers. We have to convince them that we are simply good.
The people can smell it. Instead of a united, principled movement working towards the Light on the Hill, they see a morass of parties within parties and even more parties within parties, controlled by an elite of ‘players’ for whom the light of the hill is glowing with their own image.
To recover we need to become a party of integrity. We need to institutionalise democratic practices like secret ballots in all votes via the VEC, to open preselections to the broader membership with a process that is professional and testing. We need to clean up our administrative practices and dispute resolution. We need to open our movement to the whole Australian people.
If we do not grow and empower our grass roots, the Labor Party will continue its slow death and the Light on the Hill will go out. This is why we need to talk about Labor.
More reading
ALP must repair trust between leadership & members – submission to Macklin-Bracks by James Button Oct 2020
12 steps to Labor reform – a petition from Open Labor & the Independents Sept 2020
How the Libs stole Labor’s light on the hill – by Guy Rundle, Crikey, 2 Oct 2019
A pox on both your houses – Andrew Charlton & Lachlan Harris, The Monthly, Dec 2016
Integrity in politics; the power of ideas – by Lindsay Tanner, May 2012
Janet McCalman #4233 President, North Melbourne Branc, social historian, academic, population researcher and author at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne
Over the 2019 NSW state and federal elections I knocked on many doors in the NSW Northern Rivers region. While no-one particularly expressed views on internal party arrangements a common sentiment was one of resignation, that politicians were all the same. with anti-Labor views informed largely from either from the Murdoch or the Greens.
The Labor campaign didn’t capitalise on the 2018 National Conference platform and the final-weeks’ big end of town rhetoric impressed no-one. As for the youth – most despised us. They are lost to Labor for many years.
So, supporting the author’s thrust, why was the excellent party platform from the conference disregarded in the 2019 election strategies? Does the party not trust itself? If we refuse to modernise our philosophy we will fail. Labor has to become a part of people’s living experience by seeking their involvement, responding to their concerns and proving that we have the best interests of all at heart.
I have a slightly different concern than Janet or Brendan, while broadly concurring with them both. I see two particular wicked problems with the contemporary Labor Party. Firstly, since Paul Keating’s departure from the scene, the Party has had few if any convincing advocates of the case for Labor. I suspect that this is because few of the people in leadership roles believe with strong conviction in the case they are arguing. Supporters of my generation were spoiled by coming of age politically when Gough Whitlam was Opposition Leader. EGW followed a logical process of policy development, and then argued the case persuasively – often at boring length – but the outcome was that a critical mass of the electorate was on board. Events (remember Harold Macmillan) and deficiencies in the Parliamentary Party’s processes for implementing policy conspired to curtail the grand experiment, but Gough provides the best example in my view of how to advance to Government and then accomplish worthwhile progressive action.
The other problem is that the party has become top down, and there is too little opportunity for utilising the experience and expertise of members, supporters and community members supportive of progressive policies.
I take your point Peter, but there is no new Gough waiting in the wings and we have to make do with the people we have.
What the feds and the states have is very good teams and perhaps we need to go beyond the great leader model and focus more on teams.
The crap that goes on in the party does deter some people of quality from going into Labor politics, but the major issue is that the factions consume a huge amount of energy and time that should be devoted to thinking, talking and doing what Labor stands for.
The Labor Right is in fact the major bock to creative thinking in policy and exercises a dead hand on party life.
This is why the Labor Academy is crucial to our recovery, providing training for new and continuing members, constant refreshment and the development of new talent for office.
I disagree.
Try Rose Jackson, NSW MLC.
The Left/Right divide is pungent enough to inhibit Rose and her followers from – potentially – further disrupting/dividing the Party.
Yet Fitzgibbon has advocated that the Party divide, that it split Left/Right and then govern on mutual coalition!
No opposition to Fitzgibbon. No backing for Rose.
Just how pathetic has Labor become?
This is a great discussion, thank you Peter and Janet.
To me Janet nails a crucial point when she says that factional warfare consumes a vast amount of time that should be devoted to thinking, talking and doing what Labor stands for.
The factions seem to delegate a lot of that warfare to younger people, who have the time and patience for it, having been brought up in factional incubators on campus.
The task of all of us is to find ways – incentives – to get the party talking about ideas and values, and how we make the case for them so that we can govern.
Great to have your input Peter.