Australian Labor Party (ALP)

  • Labor steps back from support for Adani

    Labor has backed away from supporting Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine. Previously, Labor leader Bill Shorten said he supported the project “so long as it stacks up”.

    But on May 1, Labor’s energy and environment spokesperson Mark Butler warned it could hurt other coalmining areas. “It will simply displace existing coal operations elsewhere in Australia,” he told ABC News. “There will be jobs lost elsewhere in Queensland or there will be jobs lost in the Hunter Valley.

  • The LGBTI community must lead on marriage equality

    I have no doubt that the plebiscite would have been won: it would have been a huge opening to build a mass movement for marriage equality and demolish the opposition. But I shared fears that the “No” campaign would have hurt our youth.

  • Build the alternative, build it now

    The 2016 federal election has confirmed the continuing decline of Australia's two-party system. The relative stability that characterised the decades after World War II was shaped by a phase of unprecedented economic growth, record low unemployment and mass home ownership. But that is long gone, in fact it was an aberration. Our system of single member electorates helped paper over the current period of rising economic insecurity, but inevitably politics is catching up.

  • Labor's ever more distant light on the hill

    Tanya Plibersek, the deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party and MP for Sydney, made a speech on June 15 where she tried to fend off the political pressure Labor is facing from the Greens and other smaller parties to the left.

  • Labor's proposed budget cuts ought to be slammed

    The Labor Party announced a series of “savings” measures on June 10, including $1 billion worth of Abbott/Turnbull cuts that had previously been blocked in the Senate. It has tried to make the attacks appear palatable by claiming they are directed at higher income families. However the truth is they reaffirm that a future Labor government's direction will be more about cutting government spending than raising revenue from the big end of town. Further, they will have bigger impacts on ordinary workers than appears evident at first glance.

  • When you pay the piper you get to call the tune

    When donations to political parties from property developers in NSW were prohibited by then-NSW Labor premier Nathan Rees in November 2009 the decision was not well received by significant groupings in the state Labor and Liberal parties. The ban followed an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiry into Wollongong City Council which, in 2008, found that local developers had received favourable treatment from elected councillors and staff.