Sue Bolton
Many people in their 40s and 50s look back fondly on the 1970s when they became the first members of their family to go to university. The 1972-75 Labor government led by PM Gough Whitlam introduced free university education for the first time in Australia's history, along with a range of other social reforms.
Fifteen years later, it was a Labor government that re-introduced university fees.
Rather than acting as a traditional social democratic party, the 1983-96 federal Labor government began implementing the same sort of neoliberal policies being imposed by the Tory government in Britain — privatisation, user-pays services, cutting funds to education and health while increasing funds to private schools, de-registering the Builders Labourers Federation and using troops to break the 1987 pilots' strike.
That Labor government, initially led by Bob Hawke, a former secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, was not pro-worker. The Hawke government introduced a prices and incomes accord, which held wages down and prevented unions from taking industrial action over wages and working hours. This led to a big shift in the wage and profit shares in relation to GDP, with the latter increasing to historic levels. Many unions stopped organising mass meetings, workplace delegate structures started to atrophy, many unionists became inactive and union membership dropped to a minority of the work force.
Once, the word "reform" referred to progressive changes, such as free education and health care, public ownership, and services to combat discrimination against women, Aborigines and migrants. However, during the 1980s the word became the descriptor of anti-working class policies.
Workers had high hopes when they voted Labor back into government in 1983. They were rewarded with a series of betrayals. The common refrain was that Labor would eventually improve workers' lot, but that it could not risk introducing reforms "too far, too fast" lest it go the same way as the Whitlam Labor government, which was sacked by the Governor-General John Kerr in 1975.
In 1996 the Labor Party lost government to the Coalition. The union movement had been so weakened by Labor's prices and incomes accord that the government, led by John Howard, passed anti-worker laws that would have been difficult to get through parliament in the 1970s. The Coalition opposition struggled in the 1980s because it found it difficult to oppose a Labor government intent on implementing a lot of Coalition policies.
Now the roles have been reversed. Since 1996, the Labor "opposition" has been struggling to map out its "vision" because it basically agrees with the policy framework of the Coalition. But to win votes Labor has to be seen to be opposing the Howard government — but not so opposed that an ALP government would be forced to repeal the Coalition's policies if elected.
An example was the goods and services tax. The GST was so unpopular that the Labor Party had to oppose it in the lead-up to the 1998 election. However, once the Howard government had introduced it, Labor said that it would be "too complicated" to repeal.
Fanning racism
Howard has taken advantage of underlying racism to ram through unpopular economic policies. For instance, shortly before the 2001 federal election, when its popularity was in decline as a result of the GST and cuts to services, the Coalition decided to disallow a refugee boat to land on Australian soil. It also excised parts of Australia to thwart the asylum seekers' attempt to claim refugee status.
The Howard government also released propaganda that would prejudice the public against the refugees. A handful of carefully cropped photographs made out that the asylum seekers were throwing their children into the water. Many months later the truth was out: the refugees were actually jumping to safety after their boat had begun to sink.
The Labor Party could have rejected the government's hysteria about the refugees. Instead, under the leadership of Kim Beazley, it voted for every piece of government-initiated anti-refugee legislation.
The ALP continues to support the Howard government's mandatory detention policy, even claiming credit for initiating this inhuman law.
Labor's refusal to counter the Howard government's racist campaign against refugees has prompted many Labor Party members to resign, and many have switched their vote to the Greens. Disillusionment with the ALP over this was particularly sharp because many believed the party to be progressive on race issues. The Whitlam government ended the White Australia policy in 1972, and introduced multiculturalism and services for Aborigines and migrants.
However, the Labor Party was also founded on the White Australia policy, with the first plank of the 1905 federal ALP platform being the "maintenance of a white Australia".
White Australia
Throughout last century there have been two main trends within the labour movement. The first was the Australian nationalist trend, fostered by the Labor Party, which aimed to keep non-white migrants out. In the early part the 20th century some unions, such as the Australian Workers Union, excluded Asians, Aborigines and women from membership. This trend believed that the best way to maintain workers' wages and conditions was to prevent Asian and Pacific Islander immigration.
Although the ALP no longer supports a White Australia policy, remnants of it are visible in its attitude to refugees and in the approach of some unions towards migrant workers.
However, an internationalist trend, led by the former Communist Party of Australia and other progressives, has also existed in the ALP over the last century. This trend led wages campaigns, including equal wages for Aborigines, and sought to unionise all workers regardless of their ethnic backgrounds.
'Terrorism' and war
The Labor Party also supports the Howard government's "anti-terror" laws, which allow it to disappear people suspected of "terrorism". "Terrorism" is broadly defined as any political action that could "endanger a member of the public", so that any political protest that involves an element of confrontation could be defined as "terrorist".
Other aspects of the new terror laws specifically target the anti-war movement and supporters of national liberation struggles. The jail sentence for sedition has been increased to seven years. Some civil liberties lawyers believe that the Australian laws are worse than similar laws in the United States and Britain because Australia has no bill of rights or overriding human rights law.
Support for US military interventions is yet another example of the similarity between the outlook of the Labor and Coalition parties. While the ALP wanted the United Nations to mandate the invasion of Iraq, which it did after March 2003, the party's opposition was somewhat muted despite the opposition to the war of a majority of its membership. Labor said nothing about the US-led occupation until its then leader Mark Latham raised the idea of Australian troops being withdrawn before the 2004 election. It was a Labor government that sent troops to support the first US invasion of Iraq in 1991.
There remains a slight difference between the major parties, with the ALP calling for some of the Australian troops to be withdrawn from Iraq and redeployed to Afghanistan and parts of Asia. The Howard government wants Australian troops in Iraq for some time.
This tactical difference over where to station Australian troops probably reflects a debate between different wings of the capitalist class. The Labor Party's position reflects its desire to shore up the interests of Australian imperialism in the Asian region.
Labor support for the US-led occupation of Iraq is consistent with its approach to foreign policy since it was formed in 1891. From the beginning, the party supported British colonial interventions in Asia and after World War II it supported US imperialism's wars in Asia.
Some people assume that the Australian government was simply following US orders by sending troops to Vietnam, but documents released over the last 20 years reveal that Australia urged the US to increase the number of troops it had there. The Australian capitalists and government didn't simply tag along behind the US: they supported US imperialism but were also intent on shoring up Australia's imperialist interests in the region.
Although the Labor Party did not send troops to Vietnam, it supported the policy, only changing its position after the war had become deeply unpopular in Australia.
Return to social democracy?
Can the Labor Party ever be transformed into a party that defends workers' rights? If there was ever a perfect opportunity to rebuild such a reputation it is now. The Howard government has passed laws that make union organising and industrial action virtually illegal.
But the Labor Party took a clear stand against Howard's Work Choices legislation only after the union movement had organised two massive mobilisations, indicating the extent of public opposition. It was only after the biggest workers' protest in Australia's history, on November 15, 2005, that Beazley pledged to "rip up" the laws if Labor won government. However, Beazley refuses to be drawn on why he supports the spread of individual contracts in the work force.
The fact that the Labor Party refused to lead on the anti-union laws campaign, preferring to see which way the wind was blowing, shows that workers shouldn't place their trust in a future Labor government.
Because most unions are affiliated to the Labor Party, there's an assumption that if it is elected it will implement pro-worker policies. But union affiliations disguise the fact that the Labor Party is basically a capitalist party.
Before the 1980s, Labor governments did implement some important reforms. They were responses to mounting pressure from massive social movement struggles and the fact that sections of the capitalist class were prepared to concede limited reforms in return for social peace. Since then, no section of the capitalist class has been prepared to concede such reforms. Instead, the capitalists have been pressuring Labor and the Coalition to reverse previously conceded reforms, such as the welfare state.
The lesson from the last 100 years is that workers and others in the movements cannot put their faith in the Labor Party.
From Green Left Weekly, February 8, 2006.
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