ALP national conference
Rather than the slick media event we've become used to in the past decade, this year's ALP national conference is shaping up as a three-ring circus. While the big business media push their campaign for Paul Keating to lead the Labor Party, the party is also being pushed and pulled in all directions as it attempts to cling to office as a party of public opinion rather than principle.
Since the onset of recession and, more importantly, the disappearance of Labor's rich and powerful friends, the party has been reeling like a drunk. The problem is not so much mass unemployment and other consequences of the recession for working people, but the drying up of the multimillion-dollar slush funds that enabled the Labor politicians to completely free themselves of the party ranks during the '80s. The ranks delivered their opinion on this development by resigning in droves. Of an initial 50,000, some 15,000 left the party in the past decade.
That didn't matter too much while big business remained on side. Expensive saturation advertising and favourable media carried Labor through several election campaigns. But now the politicians are feeling the cold. While the media would prefer Keating as Labor Party leader, it's pretty clear they won't support him for prime minister in the next elections. Labor's alliance with new money carried it through the '80s, but now the smarties of the borrowing boom are in the bankruptcy courts, the old-money Liberals are poised for the next elections, and Labor is forced to try to regain its traditional supporters.
That accounts for Bob Hawke's recent discovery of Aboriginal spirituality in the Coronation Hill decision. But the mining industry immediately began howling blue murder, stampeding the party into what now seems likely to be yet another round of the uranium debate.
There's no doubt the main issue will be the leadership struggle, with most of the media backing Keating. Will the party allow big business to select its leader? Probably. It did so in 1982-3, when Hawke was challenging Hayden.
The only ray of hope is that the Labor left has finally begun to stir. That's no coincidence: with Labor heading for the opposition benches and needing to rebuild its traditional support, the left can be useful to "pragmatic" politicians. Nevertheless, this time it's not a foregone conclusion that the right will roll through its disastrous policies unchallenged.
The Labor left hasn't covered itself with glory in recent years. In most of the Labor betrayals under Hawke, Unsworth, Burke and others, it has surrendered without a fight, and sections have collaborated with the right. Now it has a chance to reassert itself by taking a stand for social justice, the environment, peace and genuine democracy. If it does so, it will be in a position to rebuild alliances that existed before it retreated from the field.