Re-affirming the politics of class

Labour market regulation is part of the answer, but without a progressive taxation system: in which a person’s tax is determined by their ability to pay, there can be no comprehensive social wage providing essential services and infrastructure in the fields of aged care, health, education, transport and welfare. As part of this process, even those on average incomes need to pay their fair share lest the tax base not be broad enough to provide infrastructure and services for all of us, including the most marginal.

Here, Labor’s commitment to not expand overall taxation as a proportion of GDP, acts as a policy straightjacket: preventing Labor from responding to the ageing of the population, or maintaining services and infrastructure in the event the mining boom comes to an end.

The $3 billion of savings identified by Lindsay Tanner, in the context of an economy now approaching a trillion dollars GDP, are not sufficient to provide clear differentiation between Labor and the Conservatives on such vital issues. The call by Tanner, Swan, Rudd and others for “fiscal prudence” belies an unwillingness to meaningfully respond to crises in health, education, aged care and welfare. The best hope, with such a policy agenda, is that the tax system will at least be progressively restructured around the current tax intake as a proportion of GDP, providing relief for the needy without undermining the revenue base.

Clearly, Labor cannot provide for everything on its “wish list” of social programs within the space of one term: that is, it cannot do this without embracing tax reform of monumental proportions. But in an economy valued at approaching a trillion dollars GDP, is it too much to restructure the tax system to provide about $10 billion of additional revenue (about 1 per cent of GDP) to be devoted to providing and expanding accessible higher education, improve the quality of public primary and secondary education, meaningfully address the hospital waiting lists crisis, and expand Medicare into dental care? Such a spending boost could also be used to adjust pensions in response to any emissions trading scheme, and rising power costs.

Such reforms hold the prospect of winning public support once their effects are felt, and once the benefit becomes plain. Similarly, providing savings through means testing the Private Health Insurance Rebate could win acceptance if only such savings were ploughed into the provision of additional hospital beds.

Labor is hemmed in by “convergence” politics: where the relative centre has shifted further to the right over recent decades; where conservative elites have taken the lead in shaping popular culture and consciousness. Labor seeks to hold the middle ground, but it is a relative centre that is determined by its enemies, not friends. Sometimes Labor even seeks to “outflank” the Conservatives to the Right. In this process, Labor’s Left compromises too much, failing to speak out as a matter of discipline, but in the process mostly losing any independent profile, cultural impact or voice.

This stifling of the Left’s voice raises the question of whether a portion of the Left would be better off organising outside the ALP, in a party similar to the Socialist Party in Holland, or the Left Parties in Sweden and Germany. Such movements hold the promise of holding leverage over the mainstream parties of social democracy, relativising the political field and winning vital policy compromises.

It is not a decision to be taken lightly, however, as the Left has much invested in the ALP over years of hard work, dedication and commitment, and does manage a degree of policy influence.

Nevertheless, we now have the situation where the Left “held its tongue” in the run-up to the 2007 ALP National Conference, in the hope that issues such as pattern bargaining would “slip under the radar”. Today both Rudd and Gillard are resolutely stating that pattern bargaining will not be tolerated under a Labor government, and that the Building and Construction Act will be retained until 2010.

These are the laws that threatened fines of tens of thousands for individual workers taking strike action - sometimes even as trivial as a stop-work meeting - while threatening jail for workers who refuse to answer questions put to them by the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

The outlawing of pattern bargaining, meanwhile, robs workers of the vehicle of solidarity necessary to secure standard wages and conditions industry-wide, without allowing competition to create a “race to the bottom.” And political industrial action such as the famous “Green Bans”, as well as general strike protest actions, will be banned under a Labor government.

Furthermore, Labor has committed to retain the Coalition’s reactionary “Voluntary Student Unionism” legislation: laws which have crippled progressive activism on campus, and all but outlawed student representation.