BOF's gift to the NSW ALP

The great Rodney Cavalier identified a long time ago that the major flaw in the ALP is the position of affiliated unions as a controlling influence at conferences, and hence elections to the Administrative Committee etc.

Rodney has for a long time advocated for the disconnection of the unions from party governance. I've noted recently other calls for this. I've also noted the damage that comes to the ALP from the very dodgy culture within some unions.

The ALP itself is caught in a trap - how do you get the union movement to vote itself out of power? And then along comes BOF.

He has introduced a bill that changes election funding laws to (a) make campaign spending by affiliated organisations count towards spending limits and (b) to outlaw affiliation fees.

As Andrew Norton rightly notes (pun intended) the first part may not be very effective. The penalty is not to invalidate the election, merely incur a fine. And it is a little unfair as the party can't control the spending of its affiliate.

The second one which makes the affiliation fees illegal gifts would mean I think that like unidentifiable donations the money needs to be surrendered to the Electoral Commission.

So the logical response from the unions and the ALP is to disaffiliate, whereby the unions can continue to spend just as much as they currently do.

The other change that bans donations from corporations and organisations will impact all parties, so we can just expect a lot more third party campaigning.

At the heart of this is one of the great conservative strategies to "defund the Left." In his book The Wrecking Crew Thomas Frank even gave this as a reason for deficit spending by conservatives - Government had to be left impoverished for the next cycle of "liberal" rule.

More extreme views argue the left can only succeed because of all the leftist programs funded by Government.

But will this be a case of wishing for too much - like Work Choices. Could BOF actually deliver for the ALP a reform it can't deliver for itself?


Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

The Southern Highlands Branch Newsletter

Since attending the launch of Rodney Cavalier's wonderful book Power Crisis I have been a subscriber to the very worthy Southern Highlands Branch Newsletter that he edits.

The rules of subscription prohibit any quotation or attribution of content. I think, however, I would be allowed to note that the August 2011 issue gives a wonderful account of the tribal ritual of the ALP, the "annual" NSW State conference.

The fact that the ritual has changed over the years from a fiery forum in which policy and direction were debated and decided to a manufactured exercise largely staged to reflect a consensus and progress does not make it any the less ritual. As a cultural icon nothing could express more the state of the ALP in NSW than conference.

Due in no small part to my on again/off again relationship with the ALP I only ever attended two State conferences, both in the last decade. In my earlier incarnation I reached the position of President of Bennelong FEC and Secretary of (the then Eastwood) SEC without ever formally aligning myself with a faction. Quite simply I found the Right repugnant and too much of the Left impractical.

Reports have appeared elsewhere of the attack mounted by Cavalier at conference on Country Labor. It is a very good example of the symbolic clap-trap in the party, and of the paucity of content that evolves from the view of politics as marketing.

(Note: This is unfair to marketing. In one version of marketing all you do is survey the wants and needs of consumers and then reflect these back to them. A more strategic view is that you delve further into the interests of people to identify wants and needs they don't even express because they don't know how to. Changing the colour of your logo is the first kind. Inventing the iPod and iTunes is the latter. There is nothing particularly wrong with type 2 marketing as politics).

People outside the ALP still think in terms of the factions of "Left" and "Right" as representing some kind of ideological distinction, rather than merely separate strands of patronage. Even more interesting are the divisions within the left itself - as well detailed by Andrew Leigh. A related issue that bubbles through elsewhere is the extent to which the ALP left represents a genuine "socialist" path.

Whatever the basis and structure, the reality is that the two factions combined exercise almost the entire vote. There is one small group - OurALP - trying to change that.

Which brings us again to the question of "reforming" the ALP. This is a topic which - notwithstanding the Watkins/Chisholm and Bracks/Faulkner/Carr reports - still invites disagreement within the party. Primarily because every person who hears the word "change" decides it is a word that describes everyone else in the party - but not them.

So you have some who say it is about leadership (e.g. Paul Howes whose only knowledge of it is how to claim credit for the knifing of a leader that you didn't play a role in), while others talk about the need for policy initiatives to engage the electorate. But at core a failing organisation structure which provides no reason for membership, and the prospect of advancement only for how well you can play the patronage game, cannot deliver these outcomes.

An example of how strange the discussion is is the call by Watkins/Chisholm for better quality candidates but also for less central control. The ten old retired members and three neophytes that constitute the average branch are not going to be able to deliver on that ambition now.

And as I've previously noted the ALP has vigorously embraced all the modern ideas of online tools, different ways of engagement, etc. But at core all of that remains pointless when the major power controls of the party are still in the hands of organisations that represent a decreasing minority of Australia's workers.

For years it has been an ambition of the conservatives to "defund" the ALP by breaking its union ties. They seem to have stopped - because they now realize that union control of the ALP is what keeps it back.

Another theme in all party reviews has been the idea of connecting with other groups. This ignores the sorry history of the party and the influence of external bodies of both right and left seeking to gain control. But it is also a key distinction between the "soft left" and "hard left." The latter are great believers in forming associations with other groups of the left, whereas the soft left believe it is the ALP to which loyalty lies. This distinction can ultimately be applied to the relationship of the ALP to unions.

The Andrew Leigh article cited above attributes to Rodney Cavalier the statement I am in the Left because I’m in the Labor Party. Others in this room are in the Labor Party because they’re in the Left.

That neatly describes the position the party needs to get to. people are in the Labor Party because it is what they represent, not as a vehicle to represent the views they have formed elsewhere.

The ALP has a future - that future requires the recognition that everyone in the party has to change, not just everyone else.


Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Faulkner on the ALP

The SMH has reported on John Faulkner's Neville Wran Lecture at the NSW Parliament.

The story is reported under the heading "ALP must reform or die".

The perhaps unsurprising fact is that all elements of the ALP probably understand that; where they disagree is in what form this reform should take.

As Faulkner notes;

These days, as Party membership dwindles, ALP strategists talk about ‘reaching out’ to organisations active on particular progressive issues, ‘gaining endorsement’ of our policies.

That idea, with its implications of ‘us’ in Labor and ‘them’ in community organisations, is wrong. The frequency with which it’s raised by hand-wringing apparatchiks makes many wonder if Labor has lost its way.

Progressive, socially aware activists passionate about social and economic reform must never be outsiders to the Labor movement.

Against this he contrasts;

Activism, community engagement, commitment to ideas, policy debate, are not second-rate substitutes for getting into Parliament. Nor are they routine ritual posturing on the way to pre-selection. Committed members with ideals may complicate the lives of careerist Party managers but they are the life-blood of Labor. And the systematic efforts to marginalise and silence them in recent decades has brought us to where we are today.

adding;

Ladies and gentlemen, the principles of caucus unity and consistency with the party platform have historically meant that the decisions of the party, once debated and resolved, are abided by. They have not meant, and ought not to mean, an absence of debate or the appearance of an absence of debate. Labor needs to get better at explaining what solidarity and unity really mean – both to the general public and to those within the Party who have come to interpret it as acquiescence.

These comments made me think of the annual conferences I attended this century and the approach to them. I was extremely disappointed that the Left - as then represented by John Watkins and Luke Foley - was as pleased as the Right was to avoid any meaningful debate on a position of policy. The eagerness for a deal saw one conference adopt completely opposite resolutions about nuclear power under different parts of the program - both moved as amendments from the floor and neither being debated (instead being incorporated by the mover of the motion).

Faulkner's prescription, building on the national review, is;

In my opinion, and I believe in the opinion of many other members and supporters of our Labor Party, whatever specific changes are adopted, they must be guided by five key principles:
* Labor must be a Party of values and ideas;
* We must have a growing, not a declining Party;
* Labor must return real power to its members;
* We must engage and involve our supporters in the community; and
* Labor must have a culture of inclusion and innovation, not exclusion and unbridled factionalism.

I agree for the most part. However, all this introspection made me look wider and I found a document from the UK Fabian Society called Facing Out. It contains many of the ideas of wider engagement, online policy forums, differential grades of membership, that would seem to accord with a re-activated party.

But when you visit the ALP national website you will find under the tab "Get Involved" a whole slew of these activities.

The distinction is that these activities look like the "us" and "them" model that Faulkner talks about. These programs need to be at the heart of the party, not add ons to it.

But ultimately there are two big simple reforms necessary.

The first is the one Rod Cavalier has championed for about forty years...the complete end to any block union vote. The party needs to be a democratic party of individuals.

The second is to return to what I think the NSW Left under the rubric of the "Steering Committee" originally held dear - the prosecution of the objective;

The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields.

What needs to be defined is what "democratic socialisation" means in the context of an embrace of a market economy.

I have two distinct views on this. The first is to recognise that the goal of economic efficiency as taught in market theory is anti-egalitarian. Markets work for some things, but they don't advance equity.

The second is to understand that "socialisation" means to work to social not private goals, not necessarily social rather than private ownership. A consequence of that is that the objective is the restraint of power.

Great speech by Faulkner - but will it have an effect.

By the way a reminder - the Latin text at the bottom says "The NSW Right must be destroyed". By that I mean the version of the right that believes the purpose is to gain power, that through power you can exercise patronage, and through patronage you can gain future power.

There is a strong argument that the ALP as a party of ideas was as effective in opposition as it was in Government .... until 1996.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est