The ALP left props up the right writes Harry Stratton in Jacobin Magazine 4 Apr 2021. “To challenge the ALP right-wing policy agenda, we first need to democratize the party. The party’s left faction should lead this fight; instead, they’re helping perpetuate a system that keeps left-wing politics locked out.” Here is a heavily edited version of his article. It’s about NSW, but applies to Victoria too.
[Read the full article The Australian Labor Party’s Left Faction Is Just Propping up the Right by Harry Stratton Jacobin, 4 April 2021]
The intense factional disputes in countries like UK and the USA (Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders) has not emerged in Australian Labor as factions have developed relationships and in the process undermined party democracy
The NSW Right has a stranglehold, but does not crush the Left, as a compliant opposition contains pressure from ALP activists.
The NSW Head Office Left, has also opposed reforms to democratize party structures. Leader George Simon supports the same delegate system as secures the overall Right faction dominance.
Given Australia’s two-party system, the Labor Party is the only alternative party of government to the Liberal-National Coalition. Factional deals that block ALP transformation are therefore a problem for everyone.
Hyper-factionalized and undemocratic
The NSW branch claims around 11,000 members, about one-sixth of the (population adjusted) size of the British Labour after Corbyn expanded its membership. However, if branches stacked with relatives of party officials and unconfirmable members, the true membership is much smaller.
The party leadership doesn’t care about the real figure, because ordinary members don’t matter in NSW Labor. In its rare rank-and-file ballots, about two-thirds of members support Left candidates, one-third supporting the Right. This division does not translate into influence.
Factional backing is essential if you want a position of power – MPs, union secretaries, ALP staff, individual conference delegates, are almost all members of not just a faction but also of a subfaction. The subgroups have their own websites, facebook, publications, and separate policy platforms, but most are geared to patronage, not ideological differences.
The NSW Labor rules set out the complex relationship between Head Office and its members. In practice, control of Labor’s state conference is the only thing that really matters .
Fifty percent of all conference delegates are from affiliated unions. There’s a “one member, one vote” system for choosing these delegates: the union secretary is the member. Union delegates vote under instruction from their secretary, who can replace dissenters at will.
The other 50% of delegates supposedly represent ALP branches. Around 15% of these are appointed by factionalized policy forums, whose members were selected at previous conference and typically meet only for this purpose. The remaining 35% are chosen indirectly – local branches elect electorate council delegates, who then elect conference delegates.
Neither conference delegate type has much to do with the ALP membership.
According to conference accreditation forms, the Right controls two-thirds of each of these party bodies, even though the party membership tilts left. But, the ALP left props up the right.
Do members protest? Most Labor branches are run by a single faction. An ALP branch meeting is valid if it has just seven attendees — five if the branch is in a regional area – yet many branches barely manage to clear this low bar. Often branches exist only on paper or hold the minimum two uncontested meetings in the year. Few local branches can field even eight members for canvassing. But this is the way the Right faction likes it.
The more accessible online pandemic meeting process has disrupted this system of control somewhat. But until recently, the Right insisted that voting must still take place at in-person meetings. In response, Left activists held their own online mass meeting, attended by hundreds and voted by a 98% margin to recognize online branches.
There is a hunger for more democracy
Factions have a path toward defeating rivals, if they want to. The Right faction’s control over the conference gives it a stranglehold over the party’s machinery, the membership lists and campaign funds. It could also use the Internal Appeals Tribunal to expel troublemakers, who would have no legal recourse.
The Left’s path to victory would be to mobilize party members. In the 1980s, Peter Baldwin and his allies went door to door recruiting members in the Right’s inner-city fortresses. These left activists won and have retained control of inner-city Sydney.
There is a hunger for more democracy in Labor. Former ALP Senator John Faulkner has led a push for “one member, one vote” (OMOV) elections. When Head Office refused to hold a democratic election for Young Labor president, members of the Left’s youth wing ran one themselves, braving the threat of expulsion.
However, the Labor Left’s George Simon and the Head Office group have been unwilling to push for party democratization. They have entered into deals with their nominal opponents, stitching up preselections and disenfranchising local members eg the preselection of Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon.
When Left activists pressed for the expulsion of the General Secretary Kaila Murnain for her role in illegal donations, her Right faction tried to delay expulsion proceedings indefinitely. George Simon seconded its motion. Worse, the Left faction’s Senator Tim Ayres, spearheaded opposition to Faulkner’s push for OMOV and joined with the Right to defeat the change.
Labor Left leaders perpetuate the system because it leaves it in charge of its own factional fiefdom. This undemocratic structure is part of the Left faction’s DNA. It reproduces the same practices on a smaller scale: rotten borough branches, union bloc voting, and delegations stacked with apparatchiks.
OMOV would threaten both the Left and the Right factions. To democratize the ALP as a whole, first need to democratize and transform the party’s organized left wing.
The ALP left props up the right while the planet burns
If your main ambition in life is to keep a backbench seat in the upper house, voting for the Right’s policy agenda is a small price. Keep your base fired up just enough to guarantee your preselection, just bring forward the same conference motions every year, only to see them crushed by the ALP’s undemocratic structures.
Even the late Labor Right leader Johno Johnson – an ultraconservative figure – accepted that the two factions had a mutually beneficial relation. A “loyal opposition” preserves the illusion of party democracy, keeps grassroots activism bottled up, and encourages people to enlist and volunteer for Labor in the hope that, one day, the party can be reformed.
If the current leaders of the Left faction are content to twiddle their thumbs indefinitely, they should make way for people with a greater sense of urgency about the issues that are crying out for effective political action.
Related readings
Kneejerk change of leadership may not be the answer for shellshocked NSW Labor – by Anne Davies, The Guardian 24 May 2021
Branch stacking the party – by Rosie Elliott, Open Labor, 1 Nov 2021
Restore Party Democracy – Online Branch Meetings (NSW branch) – by Richard Walsham, Unprecedented Times, 16 Oct 2020
Locking out the Left: the emergence of national factions in Labor – by Osmond Chiu, Jacobin Magazine, 27 July 2020
Lavarch Review Submission – by Jamie Clements, Oct 2019 (uploaded on SCRIBED uploaded Dec 2020)
Factions and Fractions: A case study of power politics in the Australian Labor Party – by Andrew Leigh, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol 35, No. S3, pp 427–448
Harry Stratton is a lawyer and anti-corruption activist from Australia.
Leave a Reply