A blue-print to shift further right
After six months of hoopla, the much-anticipated review of the ALP's structures was released on August 9. The document is part distraction proposing minor changes to make the party appear more democratic and part substance changing structures to assist the party to further shift to the right.The most interesting aspect of it is the honesty (if sometimes coyly expressed) with which former prime minister Bob Hawke and former NSW premier Neville Wran identify the frustrations of rank-and-file members with the party: it is perceived as undemocratic, wracked by personal competition, and most importantly, that its politics are almost indistinguishable from the Coalition's.
It then goes on to propose nothing to change any of this. For example, the document states: No policy issue arose more frequently in our listening to and reading submissions from party members than that of boat people and refugees. But it simply reiterates the ALP's support for locking up asylum seekers on arrival! The only real difference with the Coalition's policy is that the ALP is proposing to move the Howard government's diaspora of desperation from Nauru and PNG to Christmas Island!
Despite rhetoric about involving women, the Emily's List proposal to increase the proportion of women ALP candidates given winnable seats to 50% was rejected as part of a factional deal before the review was released.
The aspect of the review receiving the most corporate media attention is the much vaunted reduction in factional power. However, despite much anti-faction rhetoric, nothing in the document is likely to change the factions' functioning much at all.
This is hardly surprising. The document was subjected to factional scrutiny and deal-making before it saw the light of day and both Wran and Hawke owe their very successful parliamentary careers to factional support.
Far from representing political differences, the ALP's factions are just gangs held together by their members' common aim of gorging as much as possible of the crumbs the capitalist class, through its parliamentary system, uses to buy off some members of the working class.
The main proposal in the Wran-Hawke report is to establish a directly elected component of rank-and-file delegates to the ALP national conference, and the doubling of delegates. But the delegates would be elected in state-wide postal ballots. Given that ALP members would then be asked to vote from a list of names, many of whom they did not know, it seems likely that the factions will be able to dominate this form of election.
Other proposals, such as replacing several temporary policy committees with one permanent committee appointed by the national executive, will actually tighten factional control.
The anti-branch stacking measures restricting pre-selection votes to members of two-years standing who are on the electoral roll may cause headaches for faction bosses but will hardly stop the process (particularly since branch meeting attendance requirements have been dropped). On the other hand, they will prevent young people and newly arrived migrants, particularly refugees on temporary protection visas, from participating.
The most controversial proposal is to standardise the proportion of votes held by affiliated unions at state conferences to 50%. At the moment, in NSW, Victoria and WA the unions hold 60% of votes.
While in practice the proposed change will means very little the factions will continue to run the conferences as they do now it is a clear signal that the ALP wants to strengthen its links with big business. Other elements of the document also indicate this. Statements about needing to recognise ... without value judgements that the world has changed and we must change with it, indicate that the party is set upon jettisoning much of its feigned commitment to defending the interests of working people. The report talks openly of needing to pursue links with the business community.
At the end of the day, the internal organisation of the ALP is of limited interest. The party is undemocratic not because its rules are badly formulated, or antiquated, but because it is a party which pretends to be representative of workers while enthusiastically supporting the needs of big business.
From Green Left Weekly, August 14, 2002.
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