By Sue Boland
Anyone who voted for the Australian Labor Party or the Australian Democrats in last year's federal election must be feeling well and truly duped by now. Most ALP and Democrats voters believed, falsely, that these parties represented an opposition to the pro-rich and anti-worker policies of the federal Coalition government.
Instead, as soon as ALP and Democrat politicians had returned to their comfortable parliamentary seats, all the election rhetoric about "real" opposition proved to be nothing more than hot air.
Each party has displayed its "opposition" by voting for key parts of the government's agenda — the GST, youth wages, weaker environment laws, work for the dole, corporate tax cuts and a refugee policy that Pauline Hanson would be proud of.
Disillusionment with the political system was high even before the federal election. Now, after betrayal by this farcical parliamentary "opposition", it has skyrocketed, as was reflected in the majority "no" vote in the republic referendum and the sizeable vote for One Nation and other small parties in state and federal elections.
The establishment media's journalists claim that the ALP and the Democrats are competing for "relevance" in parliament, each now more prepared to negotiate with the government than before.
While this is probably true for the Democrats, it is a superficial and inaccurate assessment of the ALP's parliamentary manoeuvres.
After the pasting it received at the hands of voters at the 1996 federal election, the ALP was faced with the task of rebuilding its voter base.
The ALP lost government because it implemented policies which dramatically increased the gap between rich and poor. Its traditional voting base suffered the most, and saw no point in continuing to support a party which was making life difficult.
However, re-winning its voting base is going to be difficult for Labor. The ALP is still a loyal capitalist party. But policies which are good for business exacerbate the wealth divide and make it more difficult to win voters. Corporate tax cuts, for example, which the ALP readily agreed to, will be paid for by the GST and by further cuts in government services, which won't be popular.
The ALP had to find a way to differentiate itself from the Coalition, simultaneously winning back some of its traditional base and yet still demonstrating its continued loyalty to business.
Opinion polls indicate that both the GST and the further privatisation of government utilities like Telstra are deeply unpopular. These, then, became Labor's issues of choice, the things it would "oppose". (Never mind that Labor privatised many utilities, and even flirted with a GST of its own, when in government.)
That the ALP's stance was adopted for purely opportunist electoral reasons is evidenced by the party's refusal to promise to abolish the GST or to renationalise privatised corporations when it next wins government.
The ALP promises only to "roll back" the GST, exempting some extra items. Shadow treasurer Simon Crean and shadow finance minister Lindsay Tanner have also indicated that they are opposed only to selling Telstra's core network. They would support the privatisation of other sections of Telstra.
Nevertheless, even token opposition to the GST and privatisation has made big business nervous. Numerous editorials in the establishment press have called on Labor not to abandon the economic rationalist policies that it pursued in government.
In response, the ALP has sought to reassure the big capitalists that it still represents their interests. On corporate tax cuts, junior rates of pay, work for the dole and attacks on universal access to welfare, it has voted with the Coalition and with business.
The ALP figures that its stance on these won't alienate too many voters. Opinion polls indicate, for instance, that many now believe that youth wages and work for the dole schemes lead to more jobs for young people. Labor happily pretends to agree.
The ALP also hopes that most workers haven't yet realised the consequences of its support for corporate tax cuts: for example, that the GST was introduced in order to pay for these handouts to business and that they will result in further cuts to government services.
'Special interests'
The next shock for progressive-minded voters was the ALP's decision to support the government's refusal of permanent residence to "illegal" refugees, a deliberate attempt to win back ALP voters from One Nation.
Author Michael Thompson and shadow minister for regional development Martin Ferguson, among others, have argued that the ALP's 1996 election loss was not a result of its economic rationalist policies. Instead, they argued, it was a result of the ALP pandering to "special interest groups": feminists, Aborigines, migrant groups and environmentalists.
It seems this view has won out. The ALP is abandoning its previous "support" for these groups, even as limited and double-edged as that was. Instead it's embracing a vision of the "battlers" no different from Howard's: right-wing, individualistic and prepared to blame other groups of workers for supposedly "getting a better deal" than they are.
The ALP and the Coalition acknowledge that there is an "elite" which is living better than everyone else. But their definition of "elite" is the better off sections of the working class and the liberal intelligentsia.
They don't count the real elite, the ones who own large slabs of the economy — the Packers, the Murdochs and other big capitalists.
Further, their version of Australia's "elite" includes any section of the working class which is politically conscious or organised.
Migrants, working women, Aborigines, lesbians and gays, workers with an environmental consciousness — all have been defined as in one way or another "elite", as "special interest groups", all the better to turn other workers against them.
Now, for instance, the "special interest elite" charge is being directed towards anyone on government benefits, regardless of whether they are unemployed, sole parents or suffering from long-term illness. And it is being levelled by Labor just as it is by the Coalition.
The ALP's parliamentary manoeuvres are hard to understand if you have been misled into thinking that it is a party which opposes the government's program.
But they are easily understood once you realise that its role is simply that of an Alternative Liberal Party, which also wants to implement pro-business policies but which still needs to win the votes of working-class people in order to do so.