What's Left?

Much has been said about the shift to the right of the two major parties over the past few decades. This has been particularly evident in the current election campaign, with Gillard and Abbott trying to out-Pauline Hanson each other on border protection. One of the major arguments for this eventuality is that the majority of the domestic “leftie issues” were fought for and won during the 60s and 70s. While racial and sexual minorities and women still face inequalities in society, overt discrimination has been legislated against in most cases. The only issues that mass numbers (I am talking hundreds of thousands) are willing to march in the street for now are the environment, international conflict and industrial relations. The Liberal party has always had right wing views on these issues. With the Work Choices election still fresh in the memory, it is unlikely that they will risk taking on the unions again. The might of the unions, however, is behind the ALP’s shift to the right in recent years.

The predominant left wing issue of the day is the environment, as evidenced by the rise of the Greens and the backlash against Rudd’s ETS back flip. The ALP has a fundamental conflict of interest when dealing with environmental issues; the biggest donors to the party, and the controllers of party convention are the trade unions. Some of the biggest trade unions in the party (and the most militant) represent workers in industries that rape and pillage the environment. The role of unions (apart from being incubators for fat, brainwashed yes men), is to protect the jobs of their members at all costs. While this is a noble cause, it often results in the militant protection of current workers, which is potentially detrimental to the plight of future workers, who may or may not be members of the particular union.

My brother is an employee in the motor trades industry, represented by the AMWU. This industry is not an industry that Australia should be pursuing into the next century, because emerging nations can manufacture at a much lower cost than we can. It would be wiser as a policy for the nation to re-train people such as my brother in industries that will flourish in the future e.g. renewable energy. While the AMWU is dying a slow death as a union, it still wields some clout. It is for this reason that ALP Governments pump cash into propping up failing car manufacturers instead of making tough decisions for the future. Why? Because future workers don’t have mortgages or mouths to feed. I am not saying that the job unions do is bad. What I am saying is that their main objective directly conflicts with the responsible and visionary development of policy for the benefit of future Australians.

Back in my days at ALP State Conventions, I would always see the bearded lefties (I am now one them, but I wasn’t then) standing up debating human rights in Zimbabwe or gay marriage. Every now and then, however, you would see the same lefties fervently arguing against the traditional “left wing” view, because they worked in the foundry that was polluting the environment. It was always amusing, I thought, that they were left wing on all occasions except when the issue impacted on their lives. A classic example of this is the CFMEU’s raucous welcome of John Howard during the 2004 election campaign, because Mark Latham had audaciously decided to protect the Tasmanian forests. The SA office of the CFMEU once housed a massive picture of Soviet revolutionary Lenin. Therein lies the ALP’s dilemma. While most unions promote left wing ideologies, this ideology does not extend to environmental issues that will cost their members jobs. This fact is one reason for the ALP’s shift to the “right” in the overall scheme of things.
Another obvious reason for the shift to the right of the ALP is obviously the influence wielded by the Catholic right faction within the party. While most of this faction consists of unions with non-environmental impacted employees (apart from the AWU), this faction is conservative on Catholic belief issues, such as gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research etc. The ALP, therefore, has unions opposed to progressive environmental change on their left flank, and unions opposed to progressive social change on its right. The union oriented structure of the party has imposed a right wing policy straight jacket. There are two more issues to discuss, racism and war.

The ALP has been a racist political party for much longer than it has been a tolerant party. Up until the late 60s, the ALP was still in favour of the White Australia policy. Arthur Calwell, former ALP leader, was famously quoted as saying “too Wongs don’t make a white”. I am not sure if Penny has a sister. The Whitlam, Keating, Hawke and Rudd eras were marked by a tolerant racial attitude, but this only consists of 40 years. Now Gillard has returned to the familiar fear mongering of floods of immigrants, as used by generations of pre Whitlam ALP leaders. While race and environmental issues have been traditionally classified as “left” issues, the ALP has not always adopted progressive views on these matters.

Protests against war are always inevitable. While some wars, such as Vietnam, advanced a right wing agenda, other wars such as World War 2 dealt with the very survival of Australia as a nation. The ALP is more left wing in its attitude towards armed conflict than the Liberal party, but both are wedded to the ANZUS alliance. I generally agree with this approach, apart from during the Bush presidency. No major party could adopt a radical left wing on national security and remain in office.

While it has been argued that no left wing issues remain, and this is the cause of the shift in party ideology, this is not the case. The main reason is that the trade unions, responsible for the operation of the ALP, favour stability and certainty when it comes to their workforce. My view of being “left wing” is being in favour of new and progressive approaches to social problems, rather than upholding the social norm. Society will always have problems. It could be argued that the environmental problems facing the world now are the greatest challenges of all time. The ALP will not be able to adapt effectively and respond to these problems unless the union movement starts to move forward in its thinking.

Fighting the battle of who could care less

The 2010 Australian Federal election campaign could be described by paraphrasing Winston Churchill; never has something so important meant so little to so many. In all my years involved in or observing election campaigns, I have never seen such a policy announcement vacuum. In a world facing some of the most difficult and pressing challenges in human history, both the Liberal and ALP leaders are pushing to for Australians to “take a breath” and be content with keeping things as they are. It is as though Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have moved to that planet in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy; you know the one where if you have an original idea, you are smacked in the face with a shovel. In this blog, I will explore the reasons behind this most mundane election campaign.

One of the key election battle grounds this time around has been economic management, which is not surprising given the Global Economic Crisis that engulfed the world in recent years. With Australians digging money holes in their back yards, Whitlamesque policy announcements are not to be expected by either side. While wads of cash are not required for all types of policy (what would gay marriage cost?), it sure helps. This is one of the main reasons we are seeing a miserly election campaign so far. Liberals are always in favour of cuts and economic conservatism. For the ALP, they are forced to play the same game because of the events of the past three years.

While the Kevin 07 ALP was able to convince the public of it’s fiscal rectitude, the Keynesian largesse of the recent term of Government has potentially spoiled this line of attack for the Labor party. The job for the ALP is to neutralise this issue by avoiding any major, expensive policy announcements and linking the Liberal parties economic strategy to Industrial Relations reforms. This brings us to another reason for the boredom of this 2010 campaign. The ALP and the union movement are relying on the spectre of WorkChoices to return them to Government, despite constant and desperate repudiations of the policy by Tony Abbott. This approach may be successful to some degree in this election campaign, but woe betide the ALP if they think this is a fail safe strategy for ever.

Electorates tend to have very short memories. They care about what is impacting upon them now, not what harmed them in the past. Look at the SA ALP’s election result following their disastrous State Bank election annihilation. The SA Liberals still try to use the spectre of the State Bank on occasion, but the electorate moved on quite quickly. The SA ALP was helped by the fact that Mike Rann was only a junior Minister in the Bannon Government. Abbott, however, is still linked to the Howard team, as is Joe Hockey. Under a Turnbull leadership, the WorkChoices line would not cut mustard. Unfortunately, under Abbott, we will be subjected to arguments about the past instead of policies for the future.

A final potential reason for the stark policy vacuum is the instability of leadership of both parties over the past election cycle. Gillard, in her three week Prime Ministership has spent the majority of the time rolling back or repudiating Ruddisms. Given that the majority of policy development by the ALP would have occurred over the past year under Rudd’s watch, it is possible that the contents of the policy war chest are all unappealing to the new Gillard team. It is also possible that Rudd, because of his domineering management style, ordered that all policy development go through him, rather than delegating it to the Ministers. As a consequence of his chop, all policy may have been chopped as well. For this reason, we are getting bizarre pronouncements by Gillard, such as we are developing an Global Warming strategy, but we will reveal it after the election. When has this ever been acceptable?

Abbott, on the other hand, is the third Liberal leader in the Rudd/Gillard era. Such instability, combined with the inferior resources of Opposition for policy development and the Libs penchant for budget cuts is the explanation for their boring campaign. Abbott has, however, announced the biggest paid maternity scheme ever proposed and massive increases in mental health spending. The unilateral nature of his parental scheme announcement, however, would have resulted in a major wing clipping of the Opposition leader. He would be loathe to embark on any more reckless of the cuff billion dollar pledges.

Well there we have it folks. Normally elections have a centrepiece e.g. a city stadium versus a hospital, reform of workplace laws etc. This time around, however, it is highly likely that the centrepiece will fortress Australia. Both parties are adopting the Pompeii approach, content with keeping the nation frozen as it is, ostrich necking the global challenges which we face. No amount of talk about moving forward will actually result in any momentum in that direction/