‘Coming to the Party’ raises some difficult questions for Labor

For lack of official party channels to argue the case for socialism, Left activists need to co-ordinate their efforts in creating and exploiting their own channels, working together to claim a space for socialist ideas in the broader public sphere.

To rediscover its ideological roots, the Left needs to have the courage to actually talk about socialism and principles of economic democracy and redistribution, including the role of various forms of social ownership.

For the Right, meanwhile, there is a desperate need to build some kind of ideological anchor. And in this process we ought not exclude the notion that traditional social democrats and advocates of gradual socialist reform might therein find a place and work to relativise the internal political spectrum of the ALP, striving towards a scenario where their ideas can again comprise the relative centre of political thought within the party.

Finally, it can also be argued that if direct election of national conference candidates were secured, if all candidates were expected to run on a platform and if said platforms were distributed to rank-and-file branch members as a matter of course - the result would be a far more credible culture of accountability and rank-and-file participation.

Barry Jones notes how Howard embraces seemingly unpopular issues (for example, the Telstra sale and the Iraq War) and manages to win regardless of this. Howard is seen as having a strategic vision, overturing the Whitlam legacy. By contrast, the ALP is seen to pursue a politics of convergence whereby the differences between the major political players are minimised.

Jones’ distaste for convergence politics is mirrored by Carmen Lawrence, who bemoans the lack of ideology in party channels, with ideologically motivated members being considered a nuisance and a distraction. By contrast with sanitised and stage-managed party conferences, it is clear that Lawrence would like to restore some heart and soul to an ALP which has too easily capitulated in the face of the tidal wave of neo-liberal globalisation.

Here, Joshua Funder’s suggestion of a non-binding policy conference could comprise one possible means of re-injecting some ideological passion and commitment into what has become a sterile internal party culture.

If anything, this process of capitulation is exacerbated by the efforts of some to outflank the Coalition on the Right regarding the issue of tax. Julia Gillard’s criticism of what she calls John Howard’s “big government” - noting an increase, from 23.1 per cent to 25.7 per cent in Federal Government taxation as a proportion of GDP - seems incongruous for one on the progressive side of the political spectrum.

Pressure for tax cuts from Labor, however, has been building for some time now, and the popular posturing embraced by Labor’s parliamentary spokespeople on this issue appears both irresponsible and opportunist. What remains unspoken in this line of reasoning is the fact that the imposition of the GST has also seen a parallel reduction in state taxation.

Along with the commitment of Bill Shorten to “[lower] everyone’s rates [of taxation]”, this raises a number of questions about how Labor could possibly afford to expand Medicare into dental care, cut hospital waiting lists, preserve and expand the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and manage the health and care costs associated with an ageing population over the long term if it were to heed the advice of some of its most prominent spokespeople.

Similarly, a Federal Labor Government would find it impossible to provide additional funding to the states for public education infrastructure and more teachers, reduce the HECS burden of tertiary students and eliminate full fee paying courses were it to pursue the agenda of tax cuts suggested by Shorten and hinted at by Gillard.

To be fair, Shorten does commit to an agenda of “nation-building and infrastructure development”, but a regime of flat taxation, embraced in earlier statements by Shorten, would inevitably prove grossly inequitable, and ambitions of infrastructure development would certainly be thwarted in the instance of a government determined to reduce overall tax levels.