Unions and the ALP: building a broader community connection

At a time when blue collar unions have become irrelevant to the vast majority of Australian voters, about half the federal ALP caucus are former officials of affiliated unions. Some have had national profiles like Greg Combet and Bill Shorten before they entered Parliament, many were undistinguished state union officials. Some were put in Parliament to get them out of the union movement.

At the same time, there are virtually no former officials in the federal caucus from non-affiliated unions, including the big successful unions covering teachers and unions – that is, the unions that feel less politically constrained and are more likely to campaign against ALP governments.

Worse still, there are very few people in the federal caucus from the NGOs and the community organisations that the ALP in recent organisational reviews has highlighted as important to its connection with the broader community. These so-called ‘like-minded’ organisations might get consulted by an ALP anxious for new sources of electoral support, but they rarely find their way inside the tent of caucus.

The ALP’s low appeal to the electorate goes a lot deeper than the usual problems and remedies often cited in the media and on commentary websites. It is not just about Gillard or the carbon tax or asylum seekers. It is not just about ‘standing for something’.

Nor will it be solved by another swing of the electoral pendulum. The ALP’s primary support is at its lowest for a century. There is no Whitlam to drag in a new middle class, nor can the ALP fall back on another round of Carr-Beattie media spin and political timidity. Those options are one-offs.

It is about community connection, real connection, not focus group replacements, and that goes to the way in which candidates for public office are selected and that, in the ALP, raises the question of which external groups are privileged above others.

The ALP continues to privilege blue-collar unions even though their significance in the broader electorate no longer warrants it. At the same time, the union movement continues to disappoint many current, former and potential members because it is unable to act independently when the ALP is in government.

Structure, and the political constraints it brings with it, are driving people towards the more apparently ‘independent’ Greens, just as a decade ago the non-unionised tradies were attracted to the Howard-led Liberals.

No amounting of moaning about preference deals will change that. Only a more open ALP structure capable of producing political candidates more representative of the broader community and more appealing to it can reverse the ALP’s long-term political decline.