The Australian Labor Party is facing yet another period of self-doubt and self-reflection. At a state level, the party has never been more successful. It is in government in all eight Australian states and territories. Yet federally, it third election defeat in succession caused grave misgivings about the party’s direction. Those misgivings were in broadly three areas: the party’s organisation, its policy and the way it is selling itself.
Those misgivings manifested themselves at the weekend with the disclosure of a submission by federal front-bencher Lindsay Tanner to a party review panel that was set up after the last election and by the announcement by three major unions that they were considering disaffiliation with the party. The leaders of two of those unions resigned from the party, one of them joining the Greens.
Mr Tanner’s concerns were directed at party structures, rather than policy or how the policy and party were being presented to voters. His argument was that there was too much branch stacking which enabled too many union officials to party pre-selection. It meant that only those with full-time political ambitions had any reason to join the party. Those that wanted to make a contribution to policy or other organisation input that was not geared to a political career were despondent. Mr Tanner’s points are pertinent. Membership of all political parties, including Labor, is shrinking as a proportion of the population. Membership of a political party is now seen only as a gateway to pre-selection, not as an opportunity to contribute to policy development. Mr Tanner correctly surmises that this was hindering the prospects of the party getting the best candidates and the best policy. Labor has gone some way to addressing the branch-stacking question, though part of that back-fired, so more needs to be done.
Mr Tanner’s call for more direct elections of delegates to the party’s national conference is sensible. The conference is a major policy-forming body – even if the parliamentary party so often ignores it. At present, up to half of its membership comes from the union movement, without direct election. Mr Tanner suggests direct election of the president of the party and even the – though direct election of party leader is perhaps going too far.
The defection of the leading unionists — Dean Mighell of the Electrical Trades Union joining the Greens and the United Firefighters Peter Marshall leaving the party – and the possibility that their unions might disaffiliate presents a challenge to Labor. It may well be that some disaffiliating unions will add strength to Labor because it will negate the Coalition’s assertion that Labor, under the leadership of Simon Crean who was once a president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, is in the pocket of the union movement and that its policies are not geared to the best interests of Australia as a whole but its mates in the union movement.
However, if unions disaffiliate, they will take their money with them. But it may well be that their money is not worth the policy compromise, especially as Union membership is down to less than a quarter of the workforce. Labor may well pick up some die-hard votes with a high-tariff, public-ownership and re-regulation agenda if it reverted to old ways. There would be some feel-good votes in it in the short term. But in the long-term this sort of policy introspection would not be good for Australia and its economic development, including generating the sort of wealth that enables closer attention to the environment.