The media and the ALP conference

Issue 

The media and the ALP conference

After it was all over, the Financial Review spoke its mind on last week's ALP national conference: "The most striking image of this conference was that of a vacuum, of weariness, of a political party too long in government, just drifting". In other words, with the next elections still two years away, it's a little early to begin full-on campaigning for the Liberals, but come the time, that's what business and the media will be doing.

From the beginning it was clear the media didn't like the conference. In fact, they have gone right off the party since its failure to elect the post-boom big business candidate for leader, Paul Keating.

Accustomed to the spectacle of Hawke government ministers dumping traditional ALP policy and kicking the life out of any opposition, particularly from the left, this time the media found a party shaken by the collapse of the '80s boom and a left that was able to take some points on policy questions.

Actually reflecting some of the concerns of the party's ranks and affiliated unions, the ALP began to bear some resemblance to its traditional self. Intolerable! Farcical! howled the media, including some journalists from the ABC who seemed to have succumbed to the megalomania that eventually overwhelms most of the Canberra press gallery.

None of this means that Labor has changed its spots, but it does mean that the '80s madness is over. The boom finished, and recession pushing down wages, the federal Labor government's usefulness to big business is now very limited, and both sides know it. Labor is forced to return to its traditional supporters if it is to have any chance at all in the next elections.

That's what the media didn't like, although that's not what they said. They chose to howl long and loud about the tied vote for the presidency and the usual factional stoushes, which they'd largely ignored in '84, '86 and '88, but the real messages was that they've changed sides.

Having paved the way for the Liberals with right-wing policies and a bust-up job on the union movement, Labor is rapidly approaching the final pay-off for its decade of government responsible to big business.

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