Peter Boyle
Ern O'Malley is the pen name used by Nige Edwards when he writes a satirical column called "Smoko" for the Online Opinion website. The pen name is a reference to the celebrated hoax of 1944, when a collection of writings from a fictitious poet was used to send up the pretentious absurdity of the Australia literary establishment.
The modern Ern's post-election column was a screamer: "Let me begin by stating what should be the bleeding obvious: YOU CANNOT WIN WITHOUT MY VOTE.
"Who am I to make such a presumptuous statement? Well I'm a motor mechanic, I'm married, I have two mortgages, and I've just voted in my seventh federal election. I wear a blue collar and get greasy and sweaty for a living, and occasionally despise my job. I'm a member of a union (for the moment) and a service club, as well as being a part-time uni student. I have been both tenant and landlord, sometimes simultaneously. I've either worked as an employee, independent contractor or run my own business in four different electorates in three states during the last decade. Oh, and I occasionally write a column in Online Opinion on the politics of the work force under the pseudonym Ern O'Malley. Demographically, I should be an unquestioning Labor supporter. So why have I voted for the Coalition at the last four elections?
"Mark, it is because the union hacks, policy wonks, shiny-bums, bleeding hearts and pointy-heads that run your party have simply failed to comprehend the changing nature of the Australian work force that Labor purports to represent. You are still assuming a dichotomous Australia, divided between the haves and the have-nots, the privileged and the under-privileged, the white and the blue collar. Guess what, mate? The country no longer works that way...
"So you won 38 per cent of the vote this time, one of the lowest ever primary votes for Labor. No doubt that the majority of these people are rusted-on Labor voters, who wouldn't change their vote. They are the welfare recipients, the taxi-drivers, the award workers and the true believers...
"I know hundreds of skilled workers, and the overwhelming majority have voted for the Coalition since 1996, despite traditionally being Labor voters. We were 'Howard's Battlers' who struggled under the 13 years of 'Hard Labor' and finally tired of Keating's arrogance. Since then, we have worked hard to climb the economic ladder of opportunity offered by the reforms of both the previous Labor and current Liberal governments. We are now a distinct class of our own, and have much in common with both sides of the previous dichotomy. And we are the voters you must win back to win government...
"Two rules for you to observe. ITES and KISS. Slick Willy said it best, 'It's The Economy, Stupid!' You can have all the touchy-feely policy you want — free double lattes for gay childcare workers on national tree-cuddling day — but if you cannot sell economic policy, you will not win. Taxes must be simple, employment must be strong, and interest rates MUST remain low. You have to convince us that you are up to the task. And of course 'Keep It Simple Stupid!'."
Mark Latham — or one of his speechwriters — must have been inspired by O'Malley's tirade because in the federal ALP leader's November 19 speech to the Australian Fabian Society, he delivered the parody as serious analysis: "After a decade of economic growth and globalisation, the two fastest growing classes in Australian society are the middle class and the underclass.
"The conventional working class — in steady, semi-skilled and low-paid jobs —— has declined. Just look at the affluence of the traditional trades in the mining, construction and service industries. In many cases, they make enough money to be investors, not just workers.
"The new middle class is here to stay, with its army of contractors, consultants, franchisees and entrepreneurs. This reflects the decentralised nature of the modern economy, where flexible niche production has replaced the organising principles of mass production.
"People have broken free from large, hierarchical organisations and become agents of their own economic future. They have less affinity with the traditional role of capital and labour, and even the notion of a traditional workplace. Australia now has more than 800,000 home-based offices, mostly occupied by this rising class of economic independents."
Latham's conclusion was a familiar one. The ALP needs to be geared to the "aspirational" voters and it needs to embrace economic rationalism/neoliberalism and distance itself from organised labour because "large, centralised institutions and policies are less relevant",
"The challenge for Labor", said Latham, "is to develop an economic agenda that works for all parts of society: policies that reward the effort and enterprise of the new middle class, while also overcoming the punishing cycle of underclass and inequality...
"I want a rising tide of economic growth to lift all boats — meeting the aspirations of the middle class, while also providing new life opportunities for the poor. This is how I see social justice: as upward mobility all-round."
Latham is scratching around for a fresh spin to sell the old "trickle down" myth — make the rich richer and we'll all get richer. He says this was the great political legacy of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments that "modern Labor" needs to champion more enthusiastically.
Hawke and Keating did kick off serious neoliberal "reform" in Australia. The rich did get spectacularly richer but did the wealth trickle down?
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the share of national income of the wage-earning majority has fallen from 61% in 1983 to 53% in 2003. If workers had kept their 1983 share, in 2003 alone they would have earned an extra $56 billion. That's just one year of income transfer from workers to the corporate rich!
The Australian Centre for Industrial Research found that 60% of workers are now more insecure about their jobs than 10 years ago, Thirty per cent work more than 50 hours a week and 1.2 million workers are under pressure to work unpaid overtime.
The proportion of casual employees in the work force has increased from 20% in 1990 to 28% in August 2003.
While privatisation of public services has enriched the corporate elite, public health, education, transport and the welfare system are in a mess.
So to try to keep selling the pro-corporate rich neoliberal agenda and win working people's votes, the ALP leadership has to repackage it as an orientation to the supposed values of the "new middle class" of private contractors. But private contractors comprise only about 10% of the work force.
The Howard government is campaigning to treat more workers as private contractors through getting their employers to force individual contracts on them. About 4% of wage and salary earners — 380,000 people — now work under Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) and the government plans to push this figure up to 10% by 2008. And they might well do so with Labor's help.
In a interview with Workers Online (the website produced by Unions NSW, formerly the NSW Labor Council — they are trying to dupe workers that they are independent of the ALP with this name-change), ALP industrial relations spokesperson Stephen Smith said: "[The Keating government] started the flexibility in bargaining with introduction of enterprise bargaining and in the last election we were very strong on not wanting to go down the AWA road. And Mark's given a couple of speeches recently where he's made it pretty clear that our starting point is enterprise bargaining and collective bargaining. We see an ongoing role for and ongoing respect for collective bargaining. But the AWA issue is an issue that parts of business are very hot to trot on, so that forms part of the policy review."
When this got around, there was an uproar in the trade union movement and Latham rushed to reaffirm the ALP's opposition to AWAs. But the right-wing direction of the ALP was affirmed in practice when Labor MPs voted in this year's final parliamentary session for the Howard government's legislation limiting industrial action, reducing civil liberties and authorising spy agencies to intercept email and SMS messages without warrants.
Labor's other "young Turk", the "leftist" Lindsay Tanner (now sulking in the backbenches) has criticised Latham's turn to the "new middle class" as the "wrong way to go".
"I don't think it's helpful to go around dividing people into little categories", Tanner told the November 29 Australian. "It's better to focus on the key messages that we need to build about creating a better country." But in the same breath, he affirmed his support for the Hawke-Keating "free-market" legacy.
So while a vicious subterranean battle for leadership continues in the ALP federal caucus, there is sickening unanimity over the party allegiance to the interests of big business.
Good job O'Malley!
From Green Left Weekly, December 15, 2004.
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