Tim Anderson
In the corporate-media-dominated two-party system that passes for democracy in Australia, there is recurrent confusion over what the Australian Labor Party actually represents.
Is Labor a force for social democracy, an "imperfect" vehicle for the labour movement and progressive causes, a broad force within which many struggles take place to "realistically" extract some small progressive change?
Or has Labor been "captured" by the corporate media conglomerate and the US empire; a vehicle for opportunist administrators who act on behalf of the big powers, presenting corporate globalisation "with a human face", which can only cede limited progressive measures and only after massive pressure from social movements?
History tells us the second scenario is the closest match.
As Labor is adept at its own myth-making, let's first look at two of them: that Labor led opposition to the Vietnam War, and that it championed Aboriginal land rights.
First, it was only left dissidents (such as Jim Cairns) who joined the anti-war movement in the early days. Gough Whitlam did not oppose the Vietnam War, at first. The Labor mainstream got on board as the anti-war movement gained strength. Then, after Vietnamese resistance (and more than a million dead) and prolonged anti-war movements in the US and Australia, it was John Gorton's right-wing government that withdrew all Australian combat troops in 1971.
While Labor ended conscription and withdrew the remaining military personnel from Vietnam in 1972, Whitlam maintained US bases, especially Pine Gap which was poised to support a possible US nuclear strike on Arab states during the 1973 Middle East war.
The lesson for the current anti-war movement? Neither major party can be trusted on war, yet both can be pressured. Anti-war movements must remain independent of the major parties.
Land rights
The second myth is that Labor championed Aboriginal land rights. After the Mabo case, Paul Keating introduced the Native Title Act 1993, which was a deceptive piece of legislation. It has delivered almost nothing to Aboriginal people, mainly because it was a piece of political theatre divorced from real political struggle.
Since the 1960s, the major advances in land rights and any recognition of Indigenous rights followed strong campaigns by Aboriginal movements and their supporters. For example, the Fraser Liberal government passed the most powerful piece of land rights legislation — the Northern Territory Land Rights Act, 1976 — after the Whitlam government had deferred the issue to a royal commission.
Small advances in the late 1970s and early 1980s under Labor in South Australia and NSW followed campaigns that forced some bipartisan support. Federal Labor in 1983 then promised national land rights legislation, but reneged on this in 1985 under pressure from mining companies and the WA Labor government.
After the 1985 Uluru handback, the Hawke and Keating governments did nothing more until the 1992 Mabo case forced them to clarify the "extinguishment" of native title in most parts of Australia.
Since then, reactionary moves by PM John Howard's government have obscured the great betrayal by Labor on Aboriginal land rights.
Labor in government did introduce some progressive policies (such as anti-discrimination laws and Medibank), but it was done in response to pressure from strong social movements. Such achievements can hide Labor's reactionary moves. For instance, the WA Labor government under Premier Carmen Lawrence first introduced mandatory sentencing — a measure aimed at Aboriginal youth.
Corporate support
Federal Labor in the 1980s dismantled the indexation of wages, and then went on to undermine social security by introducing private superannuation (to the serious disadvantage of women, in particular). It reintroduced university fees through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. The ALP introduced the first "mandatory detention" concentration camps for refugees in the early 1990s.
These initiatives should not be quickly forgotten.
Although the Whitlam government supported the US alliance (Jim Cairn's 1972 comment that US "murderers" were bombing Hanoi was an unusual outburst of honesty), lingering suspicions contributed to covert US support for Whitlam's toppling in 1975.
By then, however, corporate Australia was upset at Whitlam's unorthodox resource and finance policies, and the mass media turned against Labor. The lesson of 1975 for every Labor leader from then on (Neville Wran, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating) was that strategic alliances with the corporate sector had to be rebuilt. Labor had traditional links to manufacturing business, but this sector was in decline by the 1970s.
Crucial to the success of the Hawke-Keating governments (1983-96, the longest Labor regime in Australian history) was its wresting of corporate support from the conservatives, particularly in the finance and export sectors.
In the early 1980s, Labor rejected a popular anti-uranium policy because, as then leader Bill Hayden explained, there was concern that the banks and foreign investors would react badly. Then Keating explained away policies that rewarded the likes of Kerry Packer and Alan Bond by declaring that the "trickle-down" theory worked and that "profits were good for workers".
At the end of the 1980s, after corporate campaigns against Telstra (through, for example, Packer's Channel Nine), Labor began privatising the telecommunication industry. This later became "national competition policy", which had nothing to do with consumer benefits, but allowed private investors access to the highly profitable telecommunications, electricity and other public service sectors.
The deceit of this neoliberal venture is still cause for public mystification. Far from challenging corporate power in Australia, Labor facilitated the rise of the corporate swindlers of the 1980s so as to maintain its own miserable grasp on power.
"Left" Labor members were and are bound to this cause by caucus rules, and by their own personal ambitions. Every Labor leader committed to attaining and retaining power — and current leader Mark Latham is hardly an exception — will remain squarely focused on its great and powerful corporate friends, as well as its allies within the US empire.
For this reason, as relieved as many will be to see Howard go, it is important to recognise that under Prime Minister Mark Latham, politics will not shift substantially. Australians will still wake up to a media dominated by Murdoch and Packer, economic policies backing the banks, mining companies and woodchippers, and a renewed commitment to the US alliance.
Labor may be relieved to see a John Kerry Democratic Party administration in the US in 2005, but this relief comes largely from the removal of a required association with the crudity of Bush. Although Kerry has been critical of Bush, his argument is more about method than aims. Kerry has no real exit strategy for Iraq or Afghanistan. He is committed to increasing troop numbers in Afghanistan and to "internationalising" the occupation of Iraq.
Pressure needed
Labor's weakness will induce it to rely on Kerry's modified imperial plan. External pressure on both Labor and the conservatives remains essential in extracting Australia from this snakepit.
The US is doomed to failure in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Its history with puppet regimes (Shah of Iran) and client states (Saddam Hussein) in the Arab world is well known. While the US has devastating killing power, its skills as a colonial administrator have never been strong. Yet it is desperate to secure strategic oil supplies, and has too much pride to accept defeat easily.
These problems have been made our problems, and a rapid Australian exit from Iraq is critical. Neither the US nor Australia can have any role in "building democracy" there. Murderers, torturers and rapists can never rebuild the communities they have devastated.
Innocent people suffer for the crimes of collaborationist leaders like Howard and the former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar — as we saw in the terror bombings in Bali and Madrid. Worse, we will extend the killings and suffering of many thousands of others, by lending moral support to a morally bankrupt US empire.
We need to get Australian troops out of Iraq fast — but reliance on Labor would be badly misplaced. A Labor administration will not speak plainly to the US empire. For all Latham's past talk about "suck holes", watch him change his tune now.
Labor has always supported the "war on terrorism" — the pretext for intervention, bombings, mass murder and repression around the world in support of US strategic dominance. Resistance (including "terrorism") will not go away, because too many people hold onto their right to self-determination. And that is democracy.
Real challenges to corporate power and the US empire cannot be driven by Labor, which is formally allied to the big powers. If Labor is to move at all on the big issues it must be shamed, pressured and electorally deserted — as has happened to NZ Labour and British PM Tony Blair's New Labour.
The conservatives are also vulnerable to such pressure. It was not part of Howard's agenda to support the people of East Timor in 1999, until a massive public protest movement forced his hand.
For these reasons, I say that Labor can never be trusted, nor can democracy in Australia be reduced to our pitiful two-party system.
[Dr Tim Anderson teaches at the School of Political Economy at Sydney University.]
From Green Left Weekly, July 21, 2004.
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