Background Briefing

Radio National

Sundays at 9.10am, repeated Tuesdays at 7.10pm Labor in Crisis

Sunday 5 February 2006

James Carleton: This is Background Briefing on ABC Radio National.

Next month it’ll be ten years since the Labor Party went into opposition. Ten years since became Prime Minister, and leader of the opposition.

Labor voters might think things couldn’t get any worse. But some Labor insiders say their troubles are just beginning. They say Labor is suffering a crisis of faith so profound and intractable it’s turning the party into an irrelevancy.

The music you’re listening to is ‘Jupiter’ by Gustav Holst, from The Planets. It stirs the Anglican faithful in the form of a hymn, ‘I vow to thee my country’. But it also stirs the Labor faithful because it’s the music used 13 years ago to launch his successful election campaign. Labor hasn’t won a Federal election ever since.

Hi, I’m James Carleton, and I should declare more than a passing interest in the topic. Eight years ago, my membership of the Labor Party was suspended following allegations of wrongdoing in a preselection involving a member of my family. I chose not to return to the party and I’ve remained outside ever since.

Not so Rodney Cavalier. It’s been 20 years since he was a Minister in ’s government, but he has stayed active ever since, as President of his local branch in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. And he tells a sad story for anyone who has even the slightest affection for the Labour Movement.

He says the Labor Party’s membership base has collapsed and the party’s been left in the hands of factional warlords. As a result, Labor politicians are now introverted apparatchiks, afraid of ideas, handpicked only for their obedience to factional superiors, and totally out of touch with the electorate.

It’s a remarkable claim. Let’s put it to the test, and visit Rodney Cavalier. Every couple of years he throws a party, a big one, to raise funds and to keep his branch alive. We got our invitation courtesy of Rodney’s friend, Fairfax journalist Andrew West.

Andrew West: All right, so this is it up here on the left. Hundreds of bloody cars, you see, very big popular event, probably one of the last few genuine rank and file events that the Labor party can (park here) that the Labor party actually stages.

Most of the Labor party fundraisers these days, from what I can gather, having reported on them for many years, is that (down this way) they’re all $500 a plate,

1 $15,000 a table corporate events. Most of the people who go to them don’t actually vote Labor. This would be one of the few places where you’ll probably meet some Labor votes, attending a Labor fundraiser. But more to the point, I mean if you look at the people who go to those big corporate fundraisers, two-thirds of the people in the room are just business lobbyists, they’re not in any sense True Believers, they’re just people who are there to buy influence and access with the government of the day. And in fact the fundraiser that had, a $15,000 a table fundraiser to celebrate Carr becoming the longest Premier of New South Wales, and there was a table full of people who’d been Chiefs of Staff to various Liberal leaders in New South Wales, all applauding in a very muted, unenthusiastic way during Carr’s speech. So that really is in some ways, the face of modern Labor. This might be in the Southern Highlands, which is not exactly Labor heartland, but people come from all over the metropolitan area, because it’s one of the last genuine rank and file gatherings

And how are you, mate? You had a heart thing a few years ago didn’t you?

Mate: No, I had a back thing.

James Carleton: Let’s leave the garden party and go inside with Rodney Cavalier. It’s a beautiful big country house, it’s actually named ‘Chifley’, there’s a sign on the top of the door, obviously Rodney’s favourite Prime Minister.

The first thing I want to know is are things really that bad for Labor? I mean Labor’s no strange to opposition historically, they were out for 23 years before won in ’72.

Won’t Labor bounce back like they’ve always done before?

Rodney Cavalier: All the causes for optimism of the past I don’t think are available to us now. There is no alcove into which we retreat that can find us cause for self- delusion, because in every other crisis of identity, when things have gone real bad, we’ve been able to note that the Labor party is magnificent in adversity, and we’re resilient. And we have been; Neville Wran’s victory in 1976 followed just six months, less than six months after the destruction of the . The party was on the ropes after the scandals of the late 1980s in South Australia and Western Australia, it came back. Hawke delivered victory eight years after the dismissal. But is there any cause for such comfort now? Where do we draw from? What are the ranks that are going to provide the people who are going to transform the electoral situation across the nation?

James Carleton: And finding the answer to that question is critical for Labor. Where can they find the candidates that genuinely make a connection with people? Rodney Cavalier says the places where Labor used to find them are no longer available.

Rodney Cavalier: We used to be able to draw it from all the factories in Australia and all the mines and the railways and the ships and the trucks, the waterfront, the gangs working in the open air. And then you supplemented that gene pool with a growing army in the 1960s and ‘70s of adherence in the liberal arts, teaching, the law and other professions. You could and did go into branch meetings, and find a rich social mix. Because essentially in those times, we had people, if not everyone who

2 mattered, who could be characterised as progressive or left-wing in a whole range of social issues, foreign policy, nationalism, civil liberties. And then we had the ranks of union officials who came exclusively from those who work for a living. So they had worked on the wharves, and they had worked as shearers, and they enriched the Parliaments. But each of those sources of supply has dried up, and I mean totally dried up, because the union officials don’t come from the floor for the most part any more, and we’ve lost the great left wing coalition that thought about those things, and of course ordinary workers don’t have a show.

James Carleton: But on this very day we’re at a very healthy Labor Party function. There’s hundreds of people here.

Rodney Cavalier: Yes, and this is an isolated, very isolated, exception. If you had a simple rule: if it was a crime, if it was an offence against the law for Members of Parliament to issue postage stamps and to organise the mail-out for notices to their branches and their electorate councils, I assert to you by no later than next month, 400 to 450 of the alleged 500 branches in New South Wales would fold. You don’t even have the intellectual energy or the organisational efficiency to issue branch notices in most of New South Wales, it is done by the staff of a Member of Parliament.

James Carleton: Rodney Cavalier.

What he’s talking about is the disappearance of the iconic Labor party volunteer. For over a century, Labor supporters have joined the party, formed local branches, debated policy, organised campaigns, and selected candidates to run for parliament.

There were 75,000 members of the Labor party in the 1950s, and back then our adult population was only 6-million.

So how many members dooes the Labor party have today?

Rodney Cavalier: I’ve done the research, depending on who’s saying it in New South Wales I’m talking about, there’s 22,000 members on the books, something like that, but the real number of active members, if you define activity by a really lowest common denominator, consideration of those who come to a branch meeting on a regular basis, then it’s about 1,000, and if it’s people who put their shoulders to the wheel and take on representative office and move correspondence, and are devoted in the way that was characteristic from the 1890s until about the 1980s, it’s about 500, and of the 500, something like 200 to 300, are what in political science are called the nomenclature.

James Carleton: So you’re saying 500 active members left in the New South Wales branch, 300 of whom are on the payroll, leaving 200 ALP branch members in the entire State of New South Wales, who are both at once extremely active and selflessly motivated?

Rodney Cavalier: Yes, 200 and an overlap into the final figure of 1,000, which would give you 200 to 700, yes.

James Carleton: It’s a remarkable state of affairs when you think Labor was the

3 closest thing this country had to a mass political party. Only a few hundred active members in the largest State in the country. And yet Rodney Cavalier says a party without members can still function. But there will be a price to pay.

Rodney Cavalier: You know, party politics doesn’t have to be based on a membership, it can be based on great men, it can be based on institutions, it can be based on businesses or vested interests. The idea of a party membership is an invention of the Labour parties and the parties of the left in the 1880s, and with the centralisation of campaigning, and everything being built around the leader and the electronic campaigns and direct mail, combine that with public funding, the huge donations from the big end of town, you really don’t need a party membership any more.

James Carleton: So why then are these tears over a collapsed Labor party base [over] anything more than the death of some historic antiquity?

Rodney Cavalier: You may well be right. But the consequence is, the catchment of ideas and the prospects of renewal, a serious skills base and knowledge base of Australians, would then be forever forfeit. If the signal is the only way to go forward is to land yourself a job in a union, the party office, or a Minister, learn the orthodoxy and bend your knees whenever it’s required, then the party will continue to deteriorate and become uncompetitive electorally.

James Carleton: Rodney Cavalier.

Outside elections, Labor’s competitiveness is measured by the polls. They’re obviously crude, but they can point to electoral trends, and it’s clear for example, that Labor can and does occasionally lead in the polls; most recently in the immediate aftermath of John Howard’s Industrial Relations changes.

But the worry for Labor is this support is based as much on opposition to the government as anything else. And analysts say Labor gains are therefore thin and momentary. The latest polling would seem to confirm that.

Rodney Cavalier suggests it’s Labor’s relationship with the trade union movement that’s at the core of the problem. For over a century, the rules of the Labor party have given trade unions a dominant say in how the party is run. A hundred years ago the distinction between Labor and the unions was essentially meaningless, if you worked in manual labour, and most men did, you were almost certainly a Labor voter, and a union member.

Today, neither is the case. And yet Labor’s rules have essentially remained the same.

Rodney Cavalier: Yeah, the central problem with the Labor party is that it is controlled, lock, stock and barrel by trade unions. 100% of management power is in the hands of union leaders and their clients, and all of the State General Secretaries are their clients. All of the ruling factions are their clients, and the opposition factions are their clients. I’m not talking about workers, and I’m not talking about unionists, I’m talking about union officials. Now in a time as we sit down now, where fewer than 23 out of 100 Australian workers belong to unions, and fewer than 1 in 10 belong to

4 unions affiliated to the ALP, we are talking about a statistical nightmare; we are talking about a party that is based on a social base of no significance whatever. We’re talking about the deliberate exclusion from the managing governance of the party of about 92% of Australians. Is it any wonder that we have become unrepresentative and in that narrow head of a pin upon which non-angels dance, that the whole thing should end up in the grip of a political class? "...we are talking

about a party that is based on a social base of no significance whatever.

We’re talking about the deliberate exclusion from the managing governance

of the party of about 92% of Australians." James Carleton: Rodney Cavalier. That political class he’s talking about is the new breed of professional political operator that’s come to dominate Labor politics over the last generation, people whose first and only work experience is working for a politician or a union.

Rodney Cavalier: The genome imprints that is them, is quite divorced from ordinary Australia. Not just heartland Labor, it’s all sorts of Australians don’t feel the connection with people whose only experience of life is school, university, joining the Labor party, being cased by a faction, and being promised a job on a Minister’s staff, in a trade union, or in ALP office. And having been so placed, having been so well remunerated, they then go into parliament. If you think that’s adequate preparation, good luck to you; I don’t think it is, and I think the party is already paying the consequences for it by having so few voices that make a connection.

James Carleton: You might think Rodney Cavalier’s using a little rhetorical exaggeration in saying Labor politicians have limited life experience.

Well, how many of Kim Beazley’s Shadow Ministers can say they’ve never worked for a politician, a trade union, or at Labor party head office? Out of 31, only two. One of them came from State politics, the other’s the son of a politician. Less than a generation ago, Labor MPs entered parliament in their 40s and 50s, having worked outside politics for decades, as tradesmen and professionals.

Today, the profession of choice is politics itself. And for some time now, people in the labour movement have been speaking out against this narrowing of Labor’s gene pool. "...Well, how many of Kim Beazley’s Shadow Ministers can say they’ve

never worked for a politician, a trade union, or at Labor party head office?

Out of 31, only two." Labor academics, former Ministers, and even sitting MPs, have all had their say. But it was only when a former leader of the Labor party gave a very memorable television interview that it became a national talking point.

Mark Latham: It’s a fundamental worry you know, the culture is so bad that in many cases, I think in the Labor party’s case, it’s beyond repair.

5 Andrew Denton: If I may just read you this quote here: ‘As an institution the ALP is insoluble, a museum relic from a time when trade unions mattered, and people cared about community politics. That time has passed, and so too has the relevance of the shitcan I sit on as Labor leader.’ Why is the Labor party stuffed?

Mark Latham: Power inside the party has moved away from the grassroots, and it’s concentrated in the hands of machine men, factional organisers, union secretaries, half a dozen of them can sit down in for instance, and plan out who’s going to get all the preselections for the next 20 years. Graham Richardson coined ‘Whatever it takes’, just exercising power for the sake of it.

James Carleton: Former Labor leader, Mark Latham, speaking with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope.

Of course many reject Mark Latham and his Diary as nothing but bitterness and vitriol, from a man who himself was a factional operator throughout his career.

You might therefore discount his view that Labor’s culture is fundamentally flawed. But what if this criticism was made by someone respected across the labour movement, someone very senior whose motives couldn’t be questioned? Someone like Senator .

When word got around he was going to speak in the School of Arts building in the tiny town of Tenterfield, we hit the road once again.

It’s fitting for John Faulkner to talk about democracy here. It’s the very same building in which Henry Parkes gave that famous speech 117 years ago, which triggered a popular movement to federate the Australian colonies. It was a time of great political optimism, one which John Faulkner can find no trace of today.

John Faulkner: Thank you, Chair, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

In Australia today, there is a dangerous indifference to politics, accompanied by a simmering resentment of politicians. Our democracy is drowning in distrust.

James Carleton: John Faulkner says Australians who haven’t enough interest to stay even vaguely informed of the issues of the day have one profound political conviction: politicians can’t be trusted. The situation’s made worse because politicians treat the people with reciprocal cynicism. He says in our two-party system, it’s essential the major parties are open and democratic. And too often, the Labor party is neither.

John Faulkner: A hundred years ago, the ALP structures provided for the greatest possible participatory democracy under the circumstances. Today, the abuse of those structures too often smothers party democracy. Instead of a broad political movement, Labor has become a party of parliamentarians, with a machine element dedicated to funding campaigns, and influencing the composition and often behaviour of the parliamentarians elected. Grassroots members are an afterthought, and for many in the machine, an inconvenience. They shouldn’t worry, if things keep going as they are, they won’t have to worry about party members at all.

6 James Carleton: And that machine element that leaves Labor party members so disillusioned, is powered by the factions. Factions used to be based on belief and ideology. Today, the factions are about patronage and position. John Faulkner.

John Faulkner: Undemocratic practices are often blamed on factionalism. There is nothing inherently wrong or undemocratic about like-minded people voting together to maximise their chances of success. When such groupings are based not on shared beliefs, but on shared venality, factionalism goes bad. As party membership declines, the influence of factional warriors increases. They maximise their influence by excluding those who disagree, not through leadership and persuasion. Those who defer to the power brokers are rewarded with positions in the party, and with employment. This is not factionalism, it is feudalism, and it is killing the ALP. "This

is not factionalism, it is feudalism, and it is killing the ALP."

James Carleton: He paints a stark picture. But unlike Mark Latham, he says Labor can reform itself. More importantly, they need to, not just for their own sake, but for the good of the country.

John Faulkner: It is a dangerous moment for our democracy. I hope it will be the impetus for renewal.

APPLAUSE

James Carleton: Senator John Faulkner. And in hoping for that renewal, he can take some comfort from history. Labor has reformed itself in the past, most significantly when Gough Whitlam famously took on the 36 ‘’. Whitlam changed the Labor party rules, so that MPs and Senators could have a say, not just the unelected machine men. But he wanted more. Whitlam wanted ordinary Labor party members to have a say as well.

The year was 1967, and the Labor rank and file were demanding their seat at the table.

Man: Mr Stubby, Apology, Mr Stolly Reporter: The rank and file of the ALP. These are the people who man the polling booths and give out the How to Vote cards, and these are the people who keep the party’s branches alive between elections, by attending meetings and going to social functions.

MUSIC: SWING BAND

This function was a cabaret, organised by the Blaxland Federal Electric Council in Sydney. These dancers might enjoy the party’s music, but how much can they call the party’s tune? Some feel that if they could frame ALP policy, then the party must certainly win. They want to see their delegates going to a federal conference, the party’s supreme policymaking body.

James Carleton: But it didn’t happen. Gough Whitlam did give parliamentarians a say, but not ordinary Labor party members. And ever since, people have been trying,

7 and failing, to finish the job Whitlam started.

For example, after Labor lost the 1977 election, John Button’s inquiry recommended ordinary party members get a vote at National Conference. and Neville Wran did the same in their review of the 2001 election loss.

On both occasions they were rejected.

So why would anyone want to be a member of the Labor party in these circumstances? Well, let’s find out. And a good place to find Labor activists is any function hosted by the Fabian Society. It’s a left of centre think-tank that’s been around for 60 years.

What’s the point of being a rank and file member of the ALP these days?

Man: To try and influence policy so that Australia will be a different place in 30 years time, not just 3 years time.

James Carleton: Do you feel as a rank and file member you have the opportunity to influence policy?

Man: Yes, if you’ve got things to say and you’re willing to write to your members, you can have an influence.

James Carleton: And the say of the candidates too?

Man: Difficult at present under the faction structure.

James Carleton: How long have you been a member of the party?

Man: Since the split, 1950s. I’ve been out of it but I’m back in.

James Carleton: When was the last time you voted in a rank and file preselection?

Man: I’ve never done so.

James Carleton: What’s the point of being a rank and file member of the Labor party?

Woman: Well, I ask that question myself, but I won’t give up the fight, and I think you can achieve more being inside a political party, than being an outsider.

James Carleton: How long have you been a member of the ALP?

Man: About 15 years. There is certainly I guess a degree of frustration that there’s a disconnect between the parliamentary party and the membership.

James Carleton: How many rank and file preselections have you voted in?

Man: None.

8 James Carleton: When did you join the Labor party?

Man: 1946.

James Carleton: What’s the point of being a rank and file members of the Labor party these days?

Man: Well, it’s very difficult, it’s very difficult to communicate between the rank and file and the establishment. Very frustrating, I’ve got a lot to contribute and unfortunately, we’ve not been able to get the message across from the rank and file.

James Carleton: Is that something that’s more recently, or has it always been the way since ’46?

Man: No, no, it’s more recent. It’s since we’ve taken over celebrity rather than people. People power is the most important thing for the labour movement.

James Carleton: What are examples in your past then, where you’ve had a lot more say as a rank and file member?

Man: I used to be able to walk along the street hand-in-hand with the Prime Minister when I was 14 years old, Mr , and that’s a very important part of my life.

James Carleton: And you had a say on policy and candidates too, in those days?

Man: Yes, they would listen, they would always listen, and it was never a problem to get to the top and talk to the top.

James Carleton: Another member at this Fabian Society function is Bob Hogg, the former National Secretary of the Labor party. He ran Bob Hawke and Paul Keating’s successful re-election campaigns, he rarely grants interviews, but he did arrange to meet us back at the ABC studios in Sydney.

Does he believe the Labor party organisation has become top-down and authoritarian?

Bob Hogg: Well I think there’s rigidities that have set in, and it happens in any organisation. As you get older, your habits become habits set in concrete. So I think there’s a level of that because of the way the factions are structured and the way they’re led, and one of the by-products of factionalism is that you have the argument inside the faction and then you present a view outside. But what the people outside are not experiencing is the arguments and the thought processes, and the dialogue that led up to that which is being presented. The battle for the minds and so on. But if it splinters in the sense of anything that comes out of it as horse-trading and so on, over position, rather than ideas, well that’s no good, that’s no help.

James Carleton: Barry Jones asked many of the great Ministers of the first whether they could be preselcted under today’s much more rigid factional system, and he says that , Gareth Evans, Neale Blewett, John Button, Michael Duffy, and Susan Ryan all said no, they couldn’t be preselected today. Do you agree?

9

Bob Hogg: They’re probably right. It would be harder for them to build a base within their faction because at the age when they were selected, Button particularly, I mean he’d been running a legal firm for some time. Gareth had been quite a brilliant law academic, but they both had been out for a while, as had most of those individuals. They’d done other things, they were mature people before they became full-time political activists, I suppose.

James Carleton: Bob Hogg. And therein lies Labor’s problem. Gareth Evans and John Button would have difficulty getting preselected today, because by devoting most of their time to their careers outside the Labor Party, they couldn’t work the system full-time from within. And yet it was that very professional success they’d achieved before getting into politics, that helped make them such attractive candidates.

Today, politics is the profession, and it’s a career that usually starts before you’ve even finished university.

Bob Hogg: I don’t knock that, but it raises new problems I suppose, and [the] party has to examine and make evaluation about, make a deliberation about [it]. I think it would be handy if people went in as researchers and electoral assistants and political advisors, etc., if they went in in their 30s rather than their 20s. In other words, they’d been out of uni and they’ve been in the workplace for some time. I just think the broader the experience, the better it is.

James Carleton: Indeed every great government has its apparatchiks, but isn’t the question when it becomes not just the majority, but the vast majority, when it’s hard to identify even a small collection of individuals, two, three people, in the entire Labor front bench who don’t come from this background?

Bob Hogg: That’s the problem, but how the party finds an answer, I’m not sure, but I’m really not sure what the answer is.

James Carleton: And the problem is so intractable precisely because Labor’s membership has collapsed.

In the past, Labor had less difficulty finding a rich mix of candidates from the membership, firstly because there were more of them, but also because they had regular lives, so to speak, thy worked full time in business, the trades and professions.

Today, disillusioned members are abandoning the party, leaving apparatchiks to run for office. The few members that are left are less inclined to say, given they’ve got even less influence than they had before.

It’s a vicious cycle that Bog Hogg says the Labor party simply has to address.

Bob Hogg: How do you get the membership base? The real one and a valid one, not just manipulated one; how do you get it to the point where it’s viable and it has its own dynamic? The party membership is not growing and the population is growing. That’s the great problem. So the organisation has to find the answer to that, and

10 accordingly will shift the structure so it can do it.

James Carleton: Are there not however, people with a controlling interest in the Labor party who don’t want to find that answer precisely because the existing situation serves them well?

Bob Hogg: Well if they don’t, it’ll be forced upon them by circumstances at some point. Simply it’s in the Labor Party’s long-term interests to increase its membership, because it’s shrinking, and it’ll reach a point where there’s no critical mass. You know, they’ll all be patting each other on the back and they realise there’s only about three hands in the room.

James Carleton: Bob Hogg.

The impact of the collapse in membership is masked by the fact that all State and Territories have Labor governments. Many in the party take comfort for this.

Bob Hogg: There’s a worry it may become too much of a comfort, if it not already has. The really important government is obviously the Federal one. I’m quite sure John Howard, with all the altruism in the world, would not swap the Federal government under a direct swap for eight State and Territory governments, and vice- versa, nor would Labor if it was in federally. But what happens when you’re out for a while, obviously more and more the concentration of people is on State government, the federal arena becomes less of a focus inside the party, and that’s always a problem.

James Carleton: You don’t grant terribly many interviews, Bob, certainly not on internal Labor party organisational matters. Could I ask what’s prompted you to make your remarks today?

Bob Hogg: You do have to do a bit of internalising and self-analysis, the party has to at all times, but not to the point of flagellation, so it’s a line somewhere. Broadly, it’s this generation that’s got to fix the problems, not mine, so I don’t want to be some sort of ageing, harping, romantic. Well I’m not, I don’t think. Romantic about some aspects of the past, there was no golden period. Each period has its problems, and I guess each period’s problems are solved by the contempories of the time.

James Carleton: Former National Secretary of the party, Bob Hogg.

Luke Foley is the 35-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Labor Party in New South Wales. Before that he was the boss of a union. I found him at a Labor Party forum discussing David McKnight’s book, ‘Beyond Right and Left’. has a professional interest: he now represents the Left faction at Labor party head office. He agrees the gene pool from which Labor draws its candidates is too narrow, but he has an idea as to how Labor can solve the problem.

Luke Foley: I’ve floated the radical option of the Labor party changing its rules to actually place some restrictions on political staffers contesting preselections until they go and do something else for a certain period of time, for a year or two, that’s quite radical, but it’s a measure that could begin to redress the balance.

11 James Carleton: Wouldn’t removing the union delegations to ALP conferences be an important step towards organisational reform?

Luke Foley: No, we’re a Labor party. I support the link between trade unions and the Labor party. What I don’t support is only union secretaries having influence within the Labor party. I think union members ought to have influence. At the moment, it’s really only union secretaries who wield power through the carrying of block voters at Labor party conferences. One of the great democratic reforms the Labor party could make is to mandate that trade union delegations to Labor party forums are elected by and from the members of those unions, not just appointed by the leaders of those unions.

James Carleton: Those are two critical ones. Union memberships on the shop floor controlling their delegations to a conference, and the other one you mentioned, excluding parliamentary staffers from preselection contests. I mean you’ve been in the ALP a long time, you know how it works, what are really the prospects of success for either of those reform proposals?

Luke Foley: Well they’re not going to be adopted next year, they’re not going to be adopted at the next National Conference, but these issues won’t go away.

James Carleton: Luke Foley. And his point about workers electing their union delegates to Labor conference is important, because when the delegates are appointed by the boss of the union, as they are now, they vote as they’re told.

As a result, it’s the union bosses, not the rank and file members of the Labor party, that have a decisive say over who gets into Parliament.

The leader of the Labor party, Kim Beazley, denies it’s a problem.

Kim Beazley: Look there’s myth, there’s reality, and there’s somewhere between myth and reality when you’re dealing with issues about whether or not people in the rank and file get a say in preselection. The people in the rank and file do get a say in preselection, they get an absolute say here in New South Wales. We have a system where there is a rank and file ballot, and sometimes that has been superceded and it’s always superceded in an emergency situation.

James Carleton: What he’s referring to here is when the party machine suspends normal democratic preselections, and imposes a candidate. This is done under the party’s so-called N40 rule. It can be done for quite valid reasons: if there’s a sudden by-election, or a candidate dies and there’s no time to hold a democratic ballot.

But these so-called emergencies have been cropping up quite a bit lately. Take for example the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, where the dominant right-wing sub-faction has 19 members. Of the 19, 11 of them have been imposed without a democratic vote.

Kim Beazley.

Kim Beazley: Well some have been, and some aren’t. And everybody has been of course, whether they’re N40’d in at the outset, and it’s going to be another election, another preselection, and so on down the years. So sooner or later, whether you

12 experience it the first time that you’re endorsed, or not, you will experience it.

James Carleton: But there are many examples where this simply isn’t the case. Take the seat of Fowler for example, the second safest Labor seat in the country. Labor members there have been denied the right to choose their candidate for nine years. Locals say that’s not about to change any time soon.

Critics of the system say with so many of Labor’s safe seats reserved for these machine-appointed candidates, there aren’t too many left in which to endorse the kind of people Labor needs of it’s to win a federal election. Remember, before Bob Hawke became Prime Minister, his front bench included 4 solicitors, 4 academics, 4 retailers, a barrister, a doctor, a policeman, a priest, an engine driver and a shearer. There were only 3 union officials.

Kim Beazley’s Shadow Ministry today has 10 union officials, and 16 party and parliamentary staffers.

Kim Beazley: I think it is the case that as higher standards of professionalism have come into the operations of Australian governments, State and Federal, so a lot of people who have at one point of time or other in their employment history, been people who’ve worked for Ministers or worked for Members of Parliament, are likely to come through. They start to work for them because they’re interested.

But if you go and take a look at the inwardness of those statistics, you could take a fellow like , well he has worked for an MP and worked for a Minister, so he would show up on your statistic as one of those people who’ve had an apparatchik background. But it does so happen he’s worked as a solicitor, he’s also worked as a small businessman in running consultancies, and he’s worked as a union official, and he’s spent more time in those three areas than he has as a so- called apparatchik. And you can go through the other so-called apparatchiks and you might find something rather similar.

James Carleton: The Tony Burke he’s referring to is Labor’s 36-year-old Shadow Minister for Immigration. For the record, Mr Beazley is wrong when he says Tony Burke has worked as a solicitor. He hasn’t. He did study law, but after graduating, he joined the staff of Senator Graham Richardson.

At this point, let’s look once again at Bob Hawke’s Labor government. You’ll remember his Ministers had worked in a wide range of trades and professions before entering politics. Think of Gareth Evans, John Button, Bill Hayden, Neale Blewett, Michael Duffy, John Kerin and Susan Ryan.

Well when they were asked by Barry Jones if they could get preselected under today’s rigid factional system, they all said No, they couldn’t.

Kim Beazley says ever one of them’s wrong.

Kim Beazley: I bet you London to a brick each one of them could. I bet you London to a brick they all could. Now they may have said No, but I’ve served with all of them, and they’re exactly the sort of people which would come through in the current system, were they out there.

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James Carleton: It raises a critical question for the Labor party: why aren’t they out there? I asked Kim Beazley can Labor win with a collapsed membership base?

Kim Beazley: I think you’re going to have to hold a judgment on that. I would have, about six months ago, sat down and agreed with you on the premise of your question. I’ve got to say, having had a look now at the response in the union movement and the Labor party to Howard’s extreme industrial relations changes, there is something going on here which may have a very substantial impact on the long-term character of Australian politics.

Howard’s gone extreme on industrial relations, they have single-handedly recreated a mass political labour movement, the ramifications of which we will not see for another 18 months, but you will see it.

James Carleton: Even if a mass labour movement does emerge, as Kim Beazley suggests, Rodney Cavalier says the union leadership will sill be completely in charge.

Kim Beazley: Rodney’s not big on the union affiliation issue as you would know. He’s a good friend of mine, Rodney, but I fundamentally disagree with him on the significance of the trade union movement to the overall political Labor movement. They are what keeps the ordinary Labor party Member of Parliament real. The unions, and more particularly, those who are people like job delegates, in other words in a voluntary relationship to the union hierarchy, they are the people who organise the SES volunteers, who coach the Little Athletics, who are the sidesmen and women at the churches. The people who participate in real Australian everyday life. If you can ever mobilise them politically, you’ve got a most potent mass movement on your hands.

James Carleton: Don’t ordinary members of the Labor party also have a role to, as you put it, keep the Labor party Caucus real?

Kim Beazley: Yes, but a lot of people who are rank and file members of the Labor party really get their enjoyment out of pretty broad-based ideological debate, and many of them of course are motivated by the specific contest, if you like inside the Labor party, in relation to preselections and the like, so they like pure politics. I think that all of those attributes are sometimes very useful in keeping that contact with how the average Australian feels, but it has to be said the average Australian does not feel like a monthly political contest, and many of our branch members do. But the average member of a trade union does not feel like a monthly political contest, but he does want a society that makes him feel he’s an equal stakeholder in it, and he has a mechanism for doing that, and that’s the Labor party.

James Carleton: What Kim Beazley’s saying here turns Labor organisational philosophy on its head. The whole idea of the ALP was that its members reflected working and middle class Australia, and through a democratic party process, they would control the party. Policy, and people, would come from the bottom up.

At a small farm in country New South Wales, Labor party and union activist, Peter Botsman has a plan to return the Labor party to that guiding principle. He’s the

14 former Director of the Whitlam, Brisbane and Evatt Institutes. These days he spends his time editing the journal Australian Prospect, and running the farm.

Peter Botsman: It’s 100 acres of land in Kangaroo Valley, and it’s a Scottish Highland cattle stud and I grow a bit of garlic and a few macadamia nuts, and we make some money from selling those things, just enough to scratch a living.

James Carleton: You roast the nuts?

Peter Botsman: Oh yes, we do all the value-adding on the farm.

James Carleton: We’ve got macadamia trees.

Peter Botsman: Have you really? Yes, well you’ve just got to be able to crack them, mate, that’s the secret. It’s no use doing it by hand, because it would take you a while.

James Carleton: Peter Botsman wants to keep the link between Labor and the unions, but in a way that devolves power to ordinary union members and Labor party members. He wants one vote of equal value for every member of the Labor party, and every member of a trade union.

Peter Botsman: I think the unions themselves have got a lot to gain from this. If we say that one vote, one value applies to union members, those union members are more empowered than they are now, because the way it works now is, your union secretary casts your vote. You as a union member don’t cast your vote. If we move to this one vote, one value system, if you’re a union member and you’re a member of the Labor party, you’ve got a far bigger say over what happens in the Labor party over Labor party policy, over who the leaders are than you would ever have under the existing situation.

James Carleton: In order for your model, your plan to be implemented, a lot of people would have to give up a lot of power, or perhaps more precisely a few people would have to give up a lot of power. What are the prospects?

Peter Botsman: Well the Labor party keep on the course at the moment, and it won’t have a membership, it will simply become a professional machine of very narrowly oriented political interests, and I think one of the things that’s happening in Australia is I think the Liberal party at a national level is far more competitive than the Labor party because it is relatively more open, and it has the ability to develop more superior candidates, even in Labor strongholds like the West of Sydney for example. Because Labor is restricted to the appointment of so-called hacks and factional apparatchiks, we’re way behind the eightball. So look, change is never easy, so I don’t expect the kind of changes that I’m talking about to occur in the short-term, but I do expect them to happen over the next period of maybe ten years, because unless they do, I think the Labor party will become an irrelevancy.

James Carleton: Can Labor’s lack of success federally be put down to ideological failings? It’s a term that’s not used so often in politics these days any more.

Peter Botsman: Well look, I think a lot of people think that, and there’s this feeling

15 that Labor has lost its touch with values, it’s no longer a party of faith. The thing is, I don’t know what that is, I don’t think anybody knows what that is. What I do know is the is not democratic, absolutely tyrannical in the way it runs its administrative apparatus, and as a result the Labor party is out of touch, issues don’t matter, ideas don’t matter, the fate and future of the country don’t matter, it’s simply a game of putting in candidates and running their wives or their cousins or their sons or their brothers, that’s the Labor party.

James Carleton: Peter Botsman.

Let’s meet Rodney Cavalier again, this time in Sydney.

He says political parties can function and even win elections without members. But for the Labor party, there will be a price to pay.

Rodney Cavalier: The consequence is, especially for a party of the left that’s trying to connect itself to the people, the mass of the people, because that’s what a Labor party’s about, is that you deny yourself a broad catchment of ideas, and the prospect of renewal. You’re eliminating a serious skills base, a lot of knowledge, and the party, the branches cease to function as a bellwether, as representative gatherings, and perhaps most important of all, those ordinary people, the vast number of Australians who think that a Labor party is necessary, have lost their means of empowerment. Now what happens in those circumstances is that there is no renewal. You no longer have people joining the party or seeing anything worthwhile in belonging, so you have the tremendous dropout rate that’s already occurred throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s gathering apace in the 21st century. That will continue. And you enter a domain that’s familiar to the world of natural science. A natural scientist will tell you this is what happens when the gene pools narrow so significantly: you lose the prospect of renewal, and without renewal, a species moves to the verge of extinction.

James Carleton: Historically, the Labor party could rely on ideology to generate much of the renewal Rodney Cavalier’s talking about. But he says we’re living in a time when ideology has never been less important in party politics.

Rodney Cavalier: Remember, we’re living in a world that’s after the Cold War, and the polar opposites, the great ideological divide has vanished with the end of the Cold War. The Communist party of Australia doesn’t exist, the DLP doesn’t exist. And look at the issues that divided Labor once upon a time, got the headlines. How much of it was a real division and how much of it endured, if any? Uranium mining. Industry protection. Refugees. Each of them has been settled over a drink. They’ve been managed as issues in a way that makes sure there’s no great division. By contrast, a bad deed in a preselection ballot is unforgivable, and it’s not forgiven for the rest of that lifetime and the paybacks will be pursued into a third generation.

James Carleton: Rodney Cavalier. And yet in spite of all he’s said, and all we’ve heard about the Australian Labor party, he is still not fatally pessimistic about its future. Indeed, he’s even hopeful. It’s a sentiment that places him squarely within a century-old Labor party tradition: optimism in the face of adversity.

Rodney Cavalier: I suppose because I have seen monstrosities on a greater scale, apparently self-supporting, impregnable, absolute regimes perish because great

16 leaders realised that where they were was illegitimate and it had to come to an end. We would not have thought the Berlin Wall would fall, we would not have thought apartheid would come to an end in South Africa without bloodshed. But Gorbachev and P.W. Botha saw that in some moment of self-revelation that none of us can really understand, saw that what was, was wrong. Now I’m hoping that a Labor leader will one day stand in front of the Labor party in whatever conference has assembled, and will say that a trade union controlled party, a party that is based on fewer than 1 in 10 of the Australian electorate, fewer than 1 in 10 of Australian voters, is wrong and has to end.

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James Carleton: Background Briefing’s Co-ordinating Producer is Linda McGinness; Technical Operator, Phillip Ulman, Research and website, Anna Whitfeld, Executive Producer, Kirsten Garrett. I’m James Carleton.

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