Our ALP

By Thomas Flood, Macleay Valley Branch

In the Queensland State Election it was evident that as one moved away from Brisbane the drift away from Labor accelerated; it’s evident that country voters no longer identified with a city centered Labor. This phenomenon occurs across Australia.

It is time to implement the motions carried at the NSW State and Federal Conferences, to have an identifiable “Country Labor” brand across Australia.

In her report on National Conference the Prime Minister stated a requirement to expand Country Labor nationally. Country people deserve a Labor Party that they can trust, and link up with and one that listens to their concerns.

If we do not reclaim ‘the bush’ – where Labor had its genesis – then we don’t deserve to have any Labor Government in Australia. We must learn the lessons of Barcaldine and Rothbury, the Patrick Workers Strike and the Your Rights at Work Campaign. It’s time to put aside factionalism; to be divided is defeat.

Queensland: Labor one day; LNP the next.

There is no shortage of explanations on offer:

• the it’s time factor
• privatisation
• cost of living
• the carbon tax
• the mining tax
• scandals and stuff-ups
• sexism
• the ‘judgement of heaven’
• trust

The problem with the it’s time explanation, on its own, is that, in Queensland, it is rare for incumbent state governments, of either colour, of any age, to lose. The other explanations all seem more plausible.

Privatisation was definitely an issue, both because it hurt people, but even more than that, because it destroyed trust.

Having spent two nights in Gladstone earlier this year, I can confirm that it has become an expensive town: $600+ for two nights in an average hotel, and Sydney prices and worse, for restaurants. There were plenty of patrons, but all of them were miners.

What won’t be contributing to the cost of living is the mining tax and the carbon tax – both being as watered down as they are. But people don’t realise that – so we’ve had the pain without the budgetary gain.

Every government has scandals and stuff-ups. What matters is how many (too many), how they are handled (badly), and what steps are taken to prevent them – the obvious one being proper preselections.

Being a female leader has a swag of associated pluses and minuses. The expectation that women are more nurturing, somehow nicer, is both a plus and a minus. It predisposes the electorate to a certain warmth, but that can backfire. If a bloke lies, or swears, or is a bit of a bastard, it’s expected, it’s seen as understandable. If a woman does it, it causes mental confusion – it destroys trust.

The electorate doesn’t like politicians who break promises (lie), but the electorate is prepared to forgive, so long as they think they understand why the promise was broken. In Bligh’s case, in Gillard’s case, that isn’t the case. People don’t trust what they don’t understand – and when that behaviour is repeated, the effect is magnified – running hot then cold on carbon tax, mining tax, insulation, pokies, Rudd’s removal, being against gay marriage while living in a de-facto relationship. It confuses people. How then are they supposed to trust?

Some of the above are Federal issues, and it’s true that the electorate has some ability to distinguish between them, but only some. To properly firewall State from Federal, or vice-versa, requires a clear boundary between the two that didn’t exist at this election.

And State or Federal, way too much of the above is self inflicted.

There are other factors that are ‘acts of god’- floods, droughts, cyclones. These can’t be prevented, and people have some ability to understand that, but only some. For things that are not understood, the natural human response is credit or blame the leader. Therefore, if external events are not to destroy trust, then external events must be put into a narrative that explains why they happen, what you are doing, and why you are doing it.

It isn’t difficult:

• climate change is real
• carbon causes climate change
• climate changes causes more rain to happen, and in different places. This causes more floods and droughts and cyclones than would other happen.
• this is noticeable now, and it’s going to get worse if nothing is done to reduce carbon emissions
• a levy on polluters would reduce carbon emissions, which would reduce floods and droughts and cyclones, just a little
• therefore we are bringing in a levy on polluters
• we know it will hurt a few people a little (and you are not one of those people), but in the long run, it would hurt a lot more to do nothing.
• the resources boom has caused a two speed economy
• we know people are suffering because of the two speed economy
• fairer returns on our resources will reduce the impact of the two speed economy and help everyone share in the boom (and you are one of the people who will benefit)
• therefore we are going to charge more for our resources.

Our leaders are clever people, they know all this. Perhaps they think it is so obvious it doesn’t need to be said. It isn’t. It does need to be said, over and over again. You’d think with all the focus group research, they’d understand what the electorate does and does not understand. It seems not. Rather, it seems that because advancement in the ALP has become so purely an internal matter, all their senses are turned inwards, and the ability to connect with the electorate has been lost.

The burning question is, can Labor change? Does Labor even want to change?

By Ben Aveling
NSW Labor is experimenting with a Community Preselection for the Labor Mayoral Candidate for the City of Sydney. The ballot will be part primary, part traditional preselection, with the community and party Members each collectively having an equal say in the final outcome. (By way of example, if there should happened to be twice as many votes from members of the community voted as from party members, then each community vote will be worth half of a party member vote.)

There have been two primaries held in Australia before, one by the Nationals in Tamworth and one by the Victorian ALP in Kilsyth. The Tamworth primary was a success – there were four serious candidates, 4293 people participated, party membership went up, and there was a 14.7% swing to the Nationals, compared to a statewide swing of 2.5%. The Victorian experience was the opposite – the only candidates were staffers, 170 people participated (rumour has it that most were trade-unionists organised by one faction or the other), about 5 new members joined, and the swing against the ALP was 10.0%, compared to a state-wide average of 6.8%.

The Sydney Community Preselection will be a success if it can ‘bring people back to the party’. But for that to happen, it must also ‘bring the party back to the people’. It must deliver a locally focused candidate with strong recognition and support in and outside the party – someone with a reputation of working for and with residents, not a would-be careerist who has ‘earned a turn’ from their faction.

From: John Kilcullen
To: NSWLabor@nswalp.com

Dear Mr Dastyari,

I would like to suggest that the NSW Branch choose a replacement for Senator Arbib by rank-and-file vote.

His replacement could be elected by the NSW members who voted in the election for national president.

There is no hurry to replace Senator Arbib, so there would be time to organise a poll.

There are five male NSW senators, one female. This does not meet the “affirmative action” rule, Rule 10, http://www.alp.org.au/getattachment/07dacd1a-3e6c-498f-b722-548c222a0f5e/our-platform/

So the candidates for selection should all be women.

Best wishes,

John Kilcullen

By Ben Aveling

What happens on Monday is important.

What happens after Monday is even more important.

Australia needs the party to:

1. continue to deliver the right outcomes,
2. begin explaining why these outcomes matter, and
3. have a good, hard look at why it has not been doing these things.

Neither candidate, on their own, has all of the skills the party needs.

As Barry Jones said, “He is an exceptional communicator and she is not. She is an outstanding negotiator and he is not. … If they were capable of working together, it could make Australia proud.”

But why should they not be capable of working together?

Rudd has told Gillard to put the party first. Gillard has said the same to Rudd. Each should follow their own advice. Instead of the wisdom of Solomon, we have two candidates both arguing that half a baby is better than none. Anyone who genuinely believes the party comes first should be happy to serve, even if they privately dislike the leader.

We cannot rely on finding the perfect leader; there is no such thing, every human is fallible and finite and this does not matter. What matters is the decisions that are made, not who makes them. The Leader does not have to make every decision, the leader does not have to attend to the implementation of every decision, but the leader does have to sell the party’s decisions.

And the party’s best communicator is Rudd. And the party’s best implementer is Gillard.

And for that reason, the party should select Rudd as PM and Gillard as Deputy PM and publicly support them both – sing loudly their shared journey of change and renewal. And it will be true, so long as the party makes clear that each leader is just one voice amongst many.

The Leader is the collective voice of the party. The Leader is not the only voice in the party. And yet, and at great cost to the party, we have had a succession of people publicly saying things like “I knew we were doing the wrong thing. I wanted to speak out. I remained silent.” Many of these people are senior ministers. It seems the party lacks internal forums where our MPs can safely speak and be heard.

That has to change.

Everyone says that we need our MPs to put the wider party ahead of factional interests. For that to happen reliably, we need our MPs to be answerable first and foremost to the wider party – to members.

Factions have a role to play – to develop and promote future leaders and teach them how to win followers from the rank and file and from the wider public. But this role is lost if factions are allowed to be the final word on who our MPs and leaders are.

We have to fix this. We have to implement the Faulkner Carr Bracks Review recommendations. Most especially, we have to implement Recommendation 25 – Intervention in Preselections can only be allowed in genuinely exceptional circumstance.

Rudd has promised change: “I stand for … [a] party where its members have a real say in who leads them and what policies they deliver.”

Gillard must do likewise.

By Race Mathews
Key decisions at a steering group meeting earlier this week have identified a threefold role for Local Labor following on our party’s National Conference, namely:

• Adoption by Local Labor of the Policy Action Caucus (PAC) model, with both a national and a Victorian focus.
• An ALP Reform Implementation Watchdog project to ensure agreed reforms such as nationally of the Faulkner/Bracks/Carr review and in Victoria the Griffin Review are acted upon.
• Member induction, education, training and consciousness raising, through measures including short courses, debates, forums and the provision of a speakers bank to enable informed choices by branches and FEAs of speakers for their meetings.

Stuart Whitman and Cassandra Devine were appointed respectively as the group’s national and Victorian co-convenors and Race Mathews becomes its first national patron.

Further national patrons are expected to be announced shortly, and additional national and Victorian co-convenors and steering group members are to be sought with a view to cross-factional and gender balance.

Immediate actions agreed upon by the meeting include preparation of a submission on reform measures for presentation to the Victorian Rules Revision Committee prior to its deadline on 9 March.

The steering group will in future meet regularly, on the fourth Wednesday of every month.