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Grassroots the Local Labor Newsletter Grassroots The Local Labor Newsletter Edition One: March 2015 Party Reform: Past, Present & Future 1 Letter from the Editor Joshua Roose Welcome to the very first edition of the Local Labor Contributors Newsletter titled ‘Grassroots’ Welcome to Grassroots p.2 We all love and are deeply invested in the Labor Party. We spend Joshua Roose countless hours doing unglamorous, grinding work pivotal to the success ‘Let us Now Begin’ p.4 of the party; be it handing out how to votes, running community stalls, Race Mathews making phone calls for candidates or typing up and distributing minutes. We are not paid for our work, nor do we ask to be. We do this often A Moment of Unexpected Hope p.7 thankless, challenging and time consuming work because we believe, to Jamie Button our core, in what Labor and our friends the trade union movement stand Labor 2035 p.10 for: social justice, fairness and opportunity for working people to improve Stuart Whitman their lives. We believe that only Labor can build a truly great Australia with equal opportunity and support for all. We are, in short, Labor People Why Traceable Means Reform Must at the Grassroots. Come First p.12 Geoff Lake Labor people however, are too often overlooked within the party, with branches derided as unrepresentative of the wider community or as a Will the Part Embrace Reform? P.14 quick avenue to power within the party through branch stacking. Our Eric Dearicott voices are subsumed in the cacophony of professional appointees and Emily’s List: The Positive Possibilities of power brokers more interested in reinforcing their powerbase than in Reform p.17 engaging with the 50,000 Australians who have chosen to join the party Lisa Carey on the basis of our faith in the party’s project. This newsletter, to be The Swedish Social Democrats p.20 distributed far and wide, is a key platform by which Grassroots Labor Nick Gregory Members will be able to project their voice into key debates within the party both at State and National Levels. The Local Labor Journey So Far p.22 Cassandra Devine We will draw upon a wide base of voices from both within branches and the wider party with a view to shaping the conversation about the Party’s 2 future and achieving substantive Mathews details past attempts at We believe in a modern, structural reform. We will publish reform, channeling the spirit of democratic and inclusive Labor pieces of between 500 and 1500 Whitlam to urge for immediate party that values its branches and words. These are not tabloid style progress. Jamie Button argues that membership, acknowledges the pieces that can be read in a Labor Leaders must take the risk of vital role of the Union movement in minute, but rather, substantive and opening the party up to reform in a modern society and in the party thought provoking articles that will the present, arguing the pay-off and adopts best practice influence and shape the readers would be immense. Stuart governing models; A Labor that thinking. They will give you real Whitman’s inspirational piece understands the vital potential insights from those actively contemplates what the Labor Party contributions of Labor branches involved within the party into key might look like in the future if reform and seeks to draw on the vast debates shaping our party. was to truly occur. reserves of untapped human capital within them to increase our We invite you to print the In Part Two, we look at perspectives base in the wider community. newsletter out, sit down with a cup on party reform from a number of of coffee and actively engage contributors. Geoff Lake, a We invite you to join Local with each piece. member of the Victorian Labor, engage with our Administrative Committee outlines Our thanks go to Nicole Sherwin work, to distribute it widely the necessary first step to tackling (Design), Gavin Ryan (Distribution) the specter of branch stacking, and to join us in reforming and Hugo Kelly (content arguing a powerful case for our great party to meet the feedback) for their tireless efforts traceable means. Fellow Victorian challenges facing Australia on this first edition. Administrative Committee member in the 21st Century. Eric Dearicott, described by one journalist as a ‘fearless stickler for This Edition the rules’ then provides a detailed outline of the current state of party This first edition of the Journal reform. The Convener of the is titled Labor Reform: Past, National Labor Women’s Network Present and Future. With the Lisa Carey then describes how Emily’s List can become a 2015 State and Federal template for party reform. We then Conferences fast turn to a best practice model of approaching, the issue of party democracy, that of the party reform could not be Social Democrats in Sweden. Nick Gregory, a former electoral officer more urgent and required. Dr Joshua Roose is the Editor of now based in Sweden outlines why Grassroots. He is Secretary of This first edition draws upon a rich Labor might look to the Social the Prahran Branch and sits on the Steering Group of Local blend of leading Labor voices Democrats, whose longest period Labor. Joshua is a Research advocating reform with over two out of office since 1920 is just eight Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society at hundred years of combined party years, for inspiration. Finally, in Part the Australian Catholic membership. In Part one, the co- Three, Cassandra Devine outlines a University and Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. founder of Local Labor Race brief history of Local Labor. 3 Part One Let Us Now Begin The Hon. Dr. Race Mathews The philosopher George As noted by Gough Whitlam in an enabled it to dictate the Santayana wrote famously historic address to the 1967 composition of the Victorian Central Executive and Victoria’s ‘Those who cannot Victorian State Conference: representation on the Federal remember the past are “The TUDC is not Conference and the Federal condemned to repeat it’. mentioned in the Executive. Constitution of the Party. A case in point is failure by the There is no formal link Prior to each Victorian conference, Australian Labor Party (ALP) to between the TUDC and an initial meeting of remain mindful of the the handful which selects representatives from thirteen TUDC- circumstances and shortcomings the Central Executive. It dominated unions compiled an that denied it office from the happens, however, that ‘Official Ticket’ for all Central middle -1950s federally until 1972 the membership of both Executive, Federal Conference and until 1982 in Victoria. bodies is predominantly and Federal Executive vacancies. the same. Thirteen years When I joined the ALP in 1956, it Subsequently, the ‘Official Ticket’ ago, few delegates at the was in dire straits – reeling in the was endorsed at a further meeting, Conference would have aftermath of the failed Santamaria where representatives of up to known of the Movement or Movement takeover of the Party twenty-eight more unions were Mr Santamaria. No one and the subsequent splitting off of added to the original thirteen. doubts the influence that the Democatic Labor Party (DLP), they had on the Party’s With the conference delegations and in the grip already of yet affairs at the time. The from up to fifty unions thus locked another extremist and in this Party’s controllers have in under caucus rules to support instance ostensibly Left external swung from one extreme the ‘Official Ticket’, the winner- body, known variously as ‘The to another. “ take-all’ voting system of the day Trade Unionists’ Defence delivered all the available Committee’ (TUDC), ‘the Ticketing The TUDC’s domination of the Party vacancies to the TUDC nominees. Committee’ or simply and was achieved through a succinctly, ‘the Junta’ ’democratic centralism’ that Domination of the Party by 4 the TUDC cost it an nation, when we parade, the decision by the TUDC in 1965 otherwise certain victory at by retaining an exclusive that the provision for the election and unrepresentative Party of three Central Executive the 1961 elections, together structure, our manifest members by and from Branch with a further probable distrust of our own rank delegates to the Conference as electoral victory two years and file within the adopted the previous year should later. decision-making processes be rescinded. of the Party. An official Party body of which I At the very least, it is likely that if And again: was secretary, the Scoresby State Labor had done less badly at Electorate Council, established a the1958 elections the breakaway “All organisations, ‘Committee of Inquiry into DLP would have taken root less including radical parties, Representation and Decision- successfully and been shorter-lived. have establishments which making in the ALP’, which resist change; all have A Labor government elected in addressed to Branches throughout vested interests. All the 1961 or 1963 would not have the state a letter seeking arguments for and against involved Australia in the Vietnam information about their for a national organisation, war, or failed so dismally as the memberships and fund-raising, on with a national Liberals to harness up behind which a case for the restoration of conference directly programmes and projects of their representation might be representing Federal lasting national worth the great made. electorates and unions, economic prosperity which boil down to this question: The State Secretary, Bill Hartley, Australian enjoyed between the Is the Party to be thereupon issued instructions to middle nineteen-sixties and the oil organised in this last third Branch secretaries requiring that price shock engendered tougher of the 20th century on the committee’s letters should be times of the following decade.
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