Alison Dellit
"In Victoria, Labor and the Democrats are responsible for the Family First candidate winning the last Senate seat instead of the Greens. Family First received preferences from both Labor and the Democrats, who have effectively delivered control of the Senate to the conservative side of politics", an October 14 media release from NSW Greens parliamentarian Lee Rhiannon stated.
Rhiannon quoted Tim Colebatch's October 11 Age article: "How can Steve Fielding of Family First win one of Victoria's Senate seats with just 45,260 votes? In short because virtually every other party — including Labor and the Democrats — preferred Family First to the Greens."
In an email to Victoria's Left Link email list, former Labor left leader Bill Hartley (now expelled from the ALP) made similar points. Claiming that the ALP had "discarded federal parliament as a line of defence against the Australian corporate-controlled right", he strongly condemned Labor's decision to direct preferences to Family First.
He took issue with the ALP's claim that the preference deal was taken in Labor's best interests. "The controlling Labor Unity faction well knew its right-wing ticketed-third Senator was on the way out and took a deliberate and cynical decision to elect a far right FF candidate. The very large Labor surplus had to go somewhere ... with the exception of a small percentage of 'below the line' voters, practically the whole surplus put Labor in the same muck cart as a lynch mob of homophobes and union bashers."
Describing the swing away from Labor as "hardly surprising", Hartley added: "In the name of the war against terror, gutless state and federal territory Labor governments had already joined with the federal government ... to strip constitutional protections of individual liberties. All the hard work of struggles such as the successful fight against Menzies' [1950] Communist Party Dissolution Act went down the drain with a few strokes of the pen."
Urging activists to fight against the re-elected government, Hartley said: "In this situation, many are bruised, but not beaten. Certainly they would not be in a mood to follow the advice of major party politicians. Their challenge is to devise and effect struggle to protect workers' and individual rights, social equity and environmental values worthy of a player in the global community."
From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
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