As senior cabinet and party factional leaders intended, the Labor National Conference, over July 23-25, was a stage-managed affair with no serious debate on AUKUS or the genocide in Palestine.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, last year, declared his desire to make Labor the “natural party of government”. In practice, it means he is governing to ensure that Labor is the default party of Australian capitalism. On all major policy areas, his government is proving to be a steady hand for big business.
Yes, Labor’s modest changes to the capital gains tax and negative gearing did produce some squeals from the Coalition and business figures and, while their grievances are genuine, it also contains an element of theatre.
Big business needs more than one loyal servant in parliament to capture and deflect dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Pretending to govern on behalf of the whole population in the so-called “national interest” while putting the interests of big business first is the very art of politics for the majority of MPs.
Nowhere is this more true than in the bi-partisan determination to preserve bi-lateral military ties with Israel and to push ahead with the disastrous AUKUS war pact.
Both policies are reinforced by the bipartisan long-term plan to make Australia one of the top 10 global weapons’ producers. This amounts to a fundamental restructuring of the economy, reflected in the rush to embed the “defence industry” into public universities and schools.
Typical of this push was the outgoing Western Australia Minister for Defence Industries Paul Papalia’s declaration in July that WA Labor’s ambition is to make weapons and other military technology his states’ second largest industry.
Given Israel’s priority in producing and testing components for the Western military production, military ties with it are a non-negotiable part of the plan.
The United States already accounts for around 40% of global military spending. However, President Donald Trump wants to increase it to US$1.5 trillion in the 2027 fiscal year — a more than 50% rise on the US$901 billion approved for 2025.
Australian capitalists are desperate for a slice of the pie via the AUKUS Pillar 2 agreements which propose greater cooperation and integration of the US and Australia on AI, drones, cyber warfare, critical minerals and more.
They are relying on this to offset the losses that come with joining the highly aggressive attempt by the US to “contain” China — Australia’s largest trading partner.
They are taking a significant economic risk, but for the rest of us, the greater risk is apocalyptic.
Such a massive rise in military expenditure signals that our rulers are intending to confront climate change, not with serious climate action, but with repression and war. The risks of catastrophic nuclear conflict, which has never gone away, is dangerously increased.
Albanese’s desire for consensus on the conference floor was nearly derailed by MP Ed Husic’s motion calling on Labor to, belatedly, do the bare minimum to stop the genocide of Palestinians by cutting military ties with Israel, among other measures.
This was scuttled by the last-minute decision of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the Electrical Trades Union delegations to withdraw their seconding of the motion.
This was a bitter blow for more progressive members of the MUA, a number of whom were protesting outside Labor’s conference as part of the International and Peaceful Australia Network conference. Having campaigned to win one of the best positions on the genocide in Palestine, they saw it cast aside when it counted most.
The MUA’s national leadership argued that Husic’s motion risked the worse outcome of the Shop Distributors Association’s pro-Israel motion passing. That is nonsense. Even if the Husic motion had been put and lost, it would have reflected the debate rather than buried it. Only pressure from organised public opinion on Palestine, not horse-trading inside Labor, can force the government to do the right thing.
The union movement has a history of trading-off stated positions in the hope of winning favour with Labor governments. This “pragmatism” rarely ends well. More importantly it rests on trading off the rights of workers with less bargaining power to benefit the more privileged worker. By this logic, workers in the Global South, and in this case Palestine, are disposable.
We urgently need to step up the fight within the union movement to stop AUKUS and the associated drive to militarism. There is no “demand” for a weapons industry — except that sustained by our taxes. For every military-related job, many more people could be employed in socially useful and environmentally sustainable jobs.
We owe the merchants of death nothing. If there is a war we need to fight right now, it is the one to destroy their attempt to claim a social licence for these death machines.
AUKUS is not our defence; it’s a threat to human survival. We must fight it like the lives of future generations depend on it, because they do.
[Sam Wainwright is a national co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance and is active in Stop AUKUS WA.]