Peter Boyle
The ALP's post-election flight to the right continues with the new shadow cabinet's review of leader Mark Latham's pre-election promise to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq.
According to the October 29 Sydney Morning Herald, the ALP has also junked its pre-election promises on old-growth forests in Tasmania and tax and family policy.
"Some in the shadow cabinet argue that it would not be in Australia's interests to support a withdrawal before Iraqi elections in late January that are expected to trigger fierce conflict", the report said.
This followed an overt pitch for support from big business after Latham appointed the conservative Wayne Swan shadow treasurer and another conservative, Stephen Smith, to a new industry, infrastructure and industrial relations portfolio.
On October 26, Latham told ABC TV's 7.30 Report that "there's been criticisms by the business community that our policies haven't been flexible enough and we've got to take those criticisms seriously, and I want Stephen to engage with the business community in a thorough and comprehensive review of our industrial relations policies."
Latham had earlier declared his support for an "open market economy". The next day Smith said talks with business groups have already begun: "We've made it clear that our hallmark is flexibility but flexibility with fairness and that's what we want to ensure."
The Howard government has responded by challenging the ALP to support its unfair dismissal legislation, which it plans to reintroduce into parliament before the coalition takes control of the Senate in July.
Treasurer Peter Costello challenged the ALP to prove it was "business-friendly" by supporting this legislation and other draconian industrial relations laws that have been held up in the Senate.
Meanwhile, ALP vice president Barry Jones has been attacked by his party for criticising Labor's election campaign for capitulating to Howard's conservative agenda. Former Labor finance spokesperson Bob McMullan warned that people speaking out like Jones "have got to think about whether they consider themselves part of the team or something separate".
Latham's speechwriter Dennis Glover wrote in the October 27 Melbourne Age that Jones, who was elected to his position by ALP membership ballot, was "out of touch".
"If Barry Jones holds Labor in such contempt and feels comfortable endorsing John Howard, he should do the principled thing and resign as Labor's incoming president", he wrote. Of course, in his criticism (reported in GLW #604) Jones didn't endorse Howard.
Glover said that Jones' argument that voters had faced a choice between "two mainstream parties of the right" was "nonsense", pointing to Labor's position on Iraq. "On the great symbolic issue of the times — the Iraq war — John Howard sent the troops, while Mark Latham promised to bring them home by Christmas", Glover boasted.
Well, the new ALP shadow cabinet has now junked that difference.
From Green Left Weekly, November 3, 2004.
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