Australian Labor - a renovator's delight

The most fashionable explanation for Labor’s recent federal election loss is the Coalition’s "scare campaign" on interest rates and Labor’s failure to establish its economic management credentials.

Kim Beazley seems to have accepted this analysis. In recent months he has focused on Australia’s foreign debt and the current account deficit. He also defended Shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan’s performance on the basis that he had put these issues on the political agenda when criticism was levelled at Labor’s decision to oppose the Government’s recent tax cuts.

However the Forestry and Furnishing Products Division of the CFMEU (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union) thought the problem was much more deep-seated than this and it commissioned an analysis of Labor’s federal election performance. This analysis, which we have called The Brompton Report (pdf file 215KB), presents a coherent study of cultural, social and economic issues. It:

• argues that being an economic liberal and social conservative is an oxymoron;
• asserts that Labor’s traditional supporters are conservative; and
• contends that there are not enough votes to be had by being liberal, economically or socially, for Labor to win elections.

While we do not necessarily agree with the analysis in its entirety, we think Labor has ignored its fundamental thrust for too long and is paying a heavy political price as a consequence. Labor must take up the challenge to address these fundamental problems. If it does not, the Liberal Party’s claim that it is the preferred party of the working class may become true.

The report argues Labor has been struggling to establish its identity since the end of the Cold War. Increasingly the party is divided between those who have succumbed to economic rationalism and those who hanker for the return of the welfare state. At the same time there has been an ascendancy of those who describe themselves as progressives over those who hold traditional views on social and cultural issues.

These divisions have also become increasingly evident in the electorate as the gulf between inner metropolitan residents and people living in outer suburban and regional areas has widened to the point that the co-editor of Arena, Guy Rundle, said last December that the Australian and US election losses "mark a final rejection of the 'suburban'-left coalition that has animated progressive politics for four decades in this country and since the New Deal in the US".

This development should not have taken Labor by surprise. Australians sent a clear message when they voted on the referendum proposal in 1999. Inner metropolitan electorates, Labor and Liberal alike, voted strongly in favour of the proposal but the further people lived from the central business districts of Sydney and Melbourne, the more strongly they opposed it. High Court judge, Michael Kirby, summed the result up as “the country against the cities. The small states against the big states. The high income earners against the ‘battlers'. The educated elite against those who had lost their economic advantages in the structural adjustments which had occurred in recent times in Australia and under successive governments.” This message was reinforced by the 2001 federal election and the Tampa affair.

Mark Latham’s election as Labor’s leader signalled the arrival of somebody who understood the "culture wars". Journalist Margaret Simons wrote that Mr Latham "speaks of 'tourists' and 'residents'”:

He says the insiders live like tourists in their own country. There is a sense in which they don’t live in Australia at all. “They travel extensively, eat out and buy in domestic help. They see the challenges of globalisation as an opportunity, a chance to further develop their identity and information skills. This abstract lifestyle has produced an abstract style of politics” … The outsiders, on the other hand - the people who live in the outer suburbs and the regions - are the residents of Australia. Their values are pragmatic. They cannot distance themselves from the problems of the neighbourhood and so good behaviour and good services are important. There is no symbolism and also no dogma in the suburbs, Latham says. The residents look for small, pragmatic improvements and they are not interested in “big pictures”.

Initially Mr Latham affirmed his identification with "the residents". In response to the Redfern Aboriginal riot in February last year, he asked where the parents were. At the same time he signalled his opposition to gay marriages. He talked of the alienation of people with politics and revived community hall meetings. While visiting Tasmania the following month, at Bob Brown’s invitation, he said, "experience tells us that if a mature-age worker with one set of skills loses a job, it is incredibly hard at that age to move to another industry. I say it is not social justice to put people like that on the dole queue, it’s just not on." He also said, "we’re not here to be fiddling with the RFAs or fiddling with the process that leads to job security". He ruled out monetary compensation and said, "I think you have to have a job".

Yet two months later he imposed Peter Garrett on the voters of Kingsford Smith. The report argues that for Labor it was the beginning of the end. Next came the decision to support the US free trade agreement. And then the Left’s rebellion over supporting the Government’s legislation banning gay marriages with Mr Latham’s commitment to examining "options to achieve more consistent national treatment of all de facto relationships". Labor Left MPs said the amendment moved by the Labor leader "opened the door" for gay unions to be registered officially if Labor won government but the compromise did not satisfy anybody.

The one-day Senate committee hearing which revived memories of Tampa followed and finally there was Mr Latham’s U-turn on Tasmanian forest policy which was made even more disastrous by John Howard’s 180-degree turn in the opposite direction.

After the election, academic Dr Nick Economou wrote "Regional electorates were, and are, central to Australian election outcomes. Yet, far from seeking to secure their support, the Latham-led national ALP appeared to embark upon a strategy of deliberately antagonising regional and rural voters, particularly with its approach to environmental conservation."

He also observed "swinging voters perceive Labor not so much by the Hawke record but rather by the contribution made by the prime ministerships of Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating … These prime ministers are viewed by swinging voters as the personification of everything threatening about Labor activism … It does not help the contemporary Labor cause when the parliamentary leader leads the charge to further romanticise Whitlam and when it is reported in the press, during the campaign, that he regularly took counsel from Paul Keating."

The report asks why Mr Latham, given his understanding of the "culture wars" and identification with "the residents" and initially Tasmania’s timber workers, ended up in the subject of such comment. It is especially important, given Mr Latham’s background and instincts, that Labor determines how he became trapped in the web of the café latte set notwithstanding his resignation.

The report also details the Liberals’ clinical response to the perceived growing political influence of Protestant churches and says that "the challenge … to get out a very clear message that God isn’t a wholly owned subsidiary of the Liberal Party", to quote Kevin Rudd, will require more than making a few statements. Kim Beazley’s appearance at the Australian Christian Lobby’s conference in October may signal the beginnings of such a response.

Discussion about the political significance of religion leads to an examination of developments in the USA notwithstanding differences between that country and Australia. Baffler editor Thomas Franks has analysed Kansas’ transformation from moderate Republican (economically and socially liberal) to conservative Republican (economically liberal and socially conservative) within five years of a large pro-life rally in 1991, destroying the Democrats in the process. Mr Franks concludes "the subject of social class is always a disconcerting one for Americans, and most journalists find it simpler to blame the backlash on racism, sexism, or some unfathomable religious conviction than to broach this troubling topic. The Mods [moderates] are the worst offenders in this regard. As a rule, they do not admit the possibility that what separates them from the Cons [conservatives] is social class."

Mr Franks says, "there is a lesson for the liberals in the Kansas story … It is, rather, an utter and final repudiation of their historical decision to remake themselves as the other [emphasis original] pro-business party. By all rights the people of Witchita and Shawnee and Garden City should today be flocking to the party of Roosevelt, not deserting it. Culturally speaking, however, that option is simply not available to them anymore. Democrats no longer speak to the people on the losing end of a free-market system that is becoming more brutal and more arrogant by the day."

Last year William Galston, acting dean at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and a Clinton Administration official, wrote "a political party in a two-party system inevitably represents a diverse coalition, not a full consensus on policy or ideology. And coalition can practice distributive politics, giving each of their major constituent groups something about which they deeply care. But while parties can give different things to different groups, they cannot give contradictory things to those groups … To hold a coalition together despite its internal differences, its members must agree on something that is at least as important as the matters about which they disagree. A shared quest for political power is not enough."

The report argues these conclusions are equally relevant to Labor. It points out John Howard has also offered "contradictory things" by championing the family and small business but supporting economic polices which advantage big business at the expense of these two. However, it says, while Labor is torn between economic rationalism and the welfare state instead of developing a different economic framework which favours average Australians and small business, it will not be able to exploit the Liberals’ Achilles heel. It also says, if Labor cannot avoid promising "contradictory things", be they economic, social or cultural, to its two constituencies it must choose the outer suburbs and the regions over its inner metropolitan voters.

Labor must overcome organisational obstacles if it is to address these challenges. Hawke Government minister John Button points out "just under half the membership of the ALP in Victoria live in eight inner-suburban seats ... In some outer-suburban seats (two of them once held by the ALP) the membership is below 100. In some rural seats it is lower still. These are symptoms of being out of touch; recipes for misunderstanding. The ALP has retreated to the inner suburbs with a few outposts in traditional Labor areas and regional towns. In parliament, the background and life experience of ALP members has narrowed immensely since the time of the Hawke Government. It’s difficult to imagine a party contesting for control of the national government in Australia without a farmer, a businessman or a blue-collar worker in its representation. That is what the contemporary ALP does."

Hawke Government staffer Derek Parker’s analysis of Labor’s federal politicians demonstrates the point: "The most striking feature … is the large number who have been full-time union officials - 35, or nearly 40 per cent of the total ...The younger generation - a bit more than half of the group - went into union work directly from university … Another important point is the number of ALP parliamentarians that formerly worked as advisers to ministers or other parliamentarians - 36 of them. The union group and the adviser group are not mutually exclusive and a significant trend, especially with younger members, is the pattern of going from a mid-level union position to a political staff position prior to entering parliament. About 15 fit into this pattern."

However, regardless of the obstacles, the message of the report is clear. Labor must make itself the preferred party of the outer suburbs and regions. Failure to do so could consign it federally to the political wilderness it experienced in the 1950s and the 1960s.