Labor punished
Now that Victorian Labor's calamitous 10-year rein is over, what are the lessons that need to be drawn from the experience?
A big proportion of Victorian voters justifiably chose to punish the Labor Party for the disastrous results of its decade in state government — marked by unemployment in excess of 11%, a huge public debt and a sense of financial devastation. Many people lost their life savings. Pyramid, Tricontinental, the Victorian Economic Development Corporation and the State Bank are all names that will haunt Victorian voters for years to come.
But to argue that Labor was deposed for its "mismanagement" of the economy, as many have done, is to miss the real point. It was not mismanagement but the opening of the floodgates to big money and big business that was at the heart of the crisis Labor created. In the same way, federal Labor's recent turn to Keynesian-type support for manufacturing industry should not obscure its own long-term pro-business agenda nor the destruction left in its wake.
That Labor got what it deserved in Victoria is an unavoidable conclusion to the episodes of union busting and derelict financial speculation through which it attempted to carve out a new space in capitalist politics. Unfortunately, however, the working people of Victoria will pay much more than the Labor leaders.
The future will be even worse under the Kennett Liberal government, which will take advantage of the distress left by Labor to dramatically tighten the screws.
In this case, with the electorate severely polarised between the major parties, a big part of the anti-Labor protest vote went directly to the Coalition parties. Independent candidates polled less well than in other recent elections also because many disaffected Labor voters returned to voting for the party fearing the impending electoral rout. This decision served only to salvage some undeserved credibility for the very battered right-wing Labor leadership.
However, more telling was the absence of a satisfactory vehicle for the expression of the left/independent vote. Uneven and dispersed, the independent vote found no real focus anywhere. The need for building a united alternative campaign for the federal elections should go to the top of the left agenda.
The Kennett government has been launched from the Labor springboard into a new, deeper phase of economic "reform", especially in the area of industrial relations, foreshadowing draconian measures likely to be implemented by a Hewson federal Liberal government. The main aim is to break the back of the union movement by replacing the award system with contract employment. As well, tens of thousands of public service jobs will be destroyed, and much of Victoria's public property will be privatised. Militant unions and left unionists will be contemplating the implications of this election outcome very soberly. If a slight shift is already evident in the union movement as the possible end of the Labor federal reign draws closer, much more will be required to stop the Liberal onslaught. The one main lesson from the Victorian elections is this: in the unions and in the political sphere, there is no point delaying independent action in the vain hope a return of Labor will make things much better.