Lisa Macdonald
After yet another week of factional frenzy, for which the Australian Labor Party is increasingly renowned, it is clearer than ever that the party is in serious crisis.
Some in the party's inner circle are once again blaming the party structures, in particular the factions, for Labor's self-destruction. Right faction member Simon Crean says Labor's structures are "rotten to the core". "Left" faction heavy Julia Guillard declares that Labor must "unshackle" itself from the factions, which are "out of control and destructive".
We've heard this many times before, most recently from president Carmen Lawrence and former leader Mark Latham after the last federal election defeat. But the existence of factions is not the reason for Labor's demise. The problem is not the form but the political content — or the lack of it. No longer do the factions reflect consistent political policies or perspectives. In fact, these factional wars are characterised by the absence of political debate.
The latest ALP pre-selection battles in Victoria have been marked by little or no discussion — right or left, victors or vanquished — about unemployment, IR laws, health care or environmental destruction. Simon Crean, Bill Shorten, Bob Sercombe, Nathan Murphy, Harry Jenkins, Martin Pakula and the rest have made numerous rhetorical flourishes about "democracy in the party" and "generational renewal", but said little about a plan to counter Howard and Co.
Even when policy questions do get a look-in, the right and left factions are hard to distinguish. The dominant right faction is increasingly populated by trade union bureaucrats while the left is led by the likes of Julia (let's privatise more public health services) Guillard and Martin (let's mine more uranium) Ferguson.
That's the real source of the ALP's crisis: the fact that none of the factions have a solution to the problems faced by working people. Labor has become a thoroughly neoliberal party. As Barry Jones put it immediately after federal Labor's routing in 2004: "Coalition and Labor are the KFC and McDonald's of politics: there's little difference and both are unpalatable."
Labor's factional civil war is not over different policy directions. Nor is it about genuine attempts to democratise the organisation. Rather, it's about getting bums onto a safe seat in parliament. If the factions were abolished tomorrow, that would not change.
Undoubtedly, there are some rank-and-file Labor members who work hard trying to reform the party from within. But their battle is a lonely and a hopeless one.
Even with a clear majority of Australians wanting Labor to take a progressive stand — 66% opposition to Australian participation in the Iraq occupation; 57% support for full public ownership of Telstra; 60% opposition to the industrial relations attacks; only 36% support for tax cuts over more spending on public services, etc. — there's no sign of a serious struggle within the party against the leadership's inexorable shift to the right.
Labor's left faction leaders have instead focused on maintaining control in their electorate branches, and on their factional and front bench positions. They are more likely to be found plotting their career paths in senior Labor figure Michael Costello's trendy wine bar in Canberra (called "Das Kapital"!) than out listening and working for the labouring class.
Meanwhile, Labor governments in every state and territory have continued to drive through their own neoliberal program, destroying public health, education and transport services and jobs and agreeing to Howard's thoroughly anti-democratic "anti-terror" laws.
Labor leaders with any principles have left or are leaving the party. Some have even taken to promoting progressive alternatives: former Tasmanian ALP MP Harry Quick has, for instance, endorsed a Greens candidate in the March 18 state election.
Since no ALP faction seems to have any solutions for the millions of people under attack from the Howard regime, it is likely that Labor's internal implosion will continue and its electoral support, already down from 49% in 1987 to just 32%, will likely decline further.
A Newspoll conducted just after the last federal election asked people which major party they had voted for, then asked what had been a stronger influence on their vote — their "liking of the party they voted for" or their "disliking of the other party". Only 41% of Labor voters said they voted that way because they liked the party, whereas 50% said they voted for Labor only because of their dislike of the other parties.
If the ALP does manage to temporarily claw its way out of this crisis to win the next election, it seems it will only be because the Howard government has become too intolerable for too many people. Working people need and deserve better than this non-choice.
From Green Left Weekly, March 15, 2006.
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