The proposal by former Labor Industry Minister John Button for the Labor Party to sever it formal links with the union movement has drawn widespread condemnation within both the party and the union movement. No doubt it has also caused a certain amount of glee in Coalition ranks – happy to see internal wrangling in Labor distract the party from the main game.
The fact that Mr Button’s plan has drawn such deep and wide negative reaction is perhaps a vindication of what he is saying. It indicates that the influence of the union movement is so strong in the Labor Party that no-one would countenance it being weakened. Opposition Leader Simon Crean has already got into strife for proposing a change to the 60-40 rule under which unions get a majority of voting strength at party conferences.
Mr Button quite rightly points to the lack of democracy and participation that the rule brings. It gets more undemocratic daily as fewer members of the workforce see unions as relevant and fewer members of unions feel they have any effective say in union affairs. Union membership is now slightly less than 10 per cent of the workforce – and the percentage in Labor-affiliated unions is perhaps only half of that. And the percentage of those who are members of the Labor Party would be minuscule. Indeed, former Labor Senator Chris Schacht thought that the Adelaide Crows Football Club had more members than the Labor Party. That small number has a large influence on pre-selections. It indicates that a very few unrepresentative people are have a large say in the party’s (and nation’s affairs).
Mr Button highlighted the unrepresentative nature of the result. In 1978 just 10 of the ALP’s 64 MPs were former union officials and six of them had actually worked in their calling, six were from business, two were accountants, three farmers, six lawyers, eight teachers, four medicos, two policemen, and engineer, journalist and merchant marine officer and so on. Twenty years later, after the 1998 election, Now, of 96 members, 53 came from jobs in the party of union movement and there were 10 former state MPs and nine political lobbyists or advisers. In short, three-quarters of Labor MPs are selected from the narrow band of Labor-union political professionals.
Small wonder Labor is not seen as representative of Australia. The most recent Morgan poll has Labor on 39 per cent of the primary vote. The terrible thing for the Federal Labor Party is that the political professionals are now a large majority in the parliamentary party and each has an entourage and network of people who are owed or who owe favours and jobs. It makes the prospect of change fairly dim – at least in the short term. People will protect power bases even to the long-term detriment of their organisation.
It would not be good for Australian democracy if Labor fails to reform itself, get more representative and appeal to more people. Democracy needs good Opposition and reasonably frequent changes of power. Power brokers in the labor Party should look to the grim British experience on the penalties for failure to change and remove undue union influence. It was out of power for 18 years and it was only after union dominance of the party ended did it get back into power.
Rather than spending a huge amount of time and effort cut union voting from 60 to 50 percent, Mr Crean should take some of the things Mr Button is saying to heart. The Labor Party cannot expect to get back to power by just relying on a Liberal Party implosion.