Like Greg Combet, who has called for Labor to ‘redefine itself as progressive with the core value of equity, social justice and compassion’ Cameron is concerned the party is losing ground to the Greens.
He called for the Left in the party to be able to ‘speak effectively to progressive people who are looking for a vision and a strong strategy for progressive policies.’
However, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald:
New party rules introduced by Mr Rudd, which were designed to present a united front by stopping MPs from speaking against a Caucus position, worked in the government's favour early on but ended up costing the party.
‘There are many people within the Labor Party holding strong progressive points of view and progressive voters don't know this,’ he said.
‘The pledge system and the party system just puts a blanket over every different point of view.‘Everything is focused on the spin and on the take of the day and long
term strategic policy decisions suffer because of that.’
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in response to the Senator's comments that she made it clear to Caucus she wanted more debate and new ideas about policy direction. But the pledge system would stay, Ms Gillard said.
One of the reasons that Australian politics is the most rigid in the world is the because of ‘the pledge’: the promise that ALP members make to uphold the party platform and to follow decisions made by Caucus.It is this practice that has provided Australia with the most rigid party system in the Westminster world.
This may have been appropriate once upon a time where one centre left party opposed a single coalition of the centre right, but may be less appropriate now.
As we have previously observed:
The ALP voting coalition has hitherto consisted of self identifying members of the labour movement, people with English as a second language, income transfer recipients, public sector workers, the arts sector and high income professionals who are both secularist and internationalist in orientation.However, the Greens message - guided by the so-called ‘four pillars’ (ecological sustainability, social equality and economic justice, grassroots democracy and peace and disarmament and nonviolence) is apparently more amenable to a ‘progressive’ middle class constituency than one put out by a regimented party with 50% union control designed to represent the ‘labour movement’ and achieving social justice primarily through the improvement of working conditions and changes to the wages and salaries system.
Despite winning the federal election, the ALP looks like they are going through the introspection usually undertaken by the losing side.
Eyes now turn to Victoria, where the Greens could get up to 19% of the vote and a number of seats in the Legislative Assembly – possibly even holding the balance of power.
This will mean the ‘quo vadis’ question being asked with increased vigour.
As Labor voters from the ‘moral middle class’ feel able to vote Green the traditional ALP ‘upside down coalition’ of social progressives and the traditional ‘working class’ is now under great strain.
Rather than claiming to be in favour of ‘equity, social justice and compassion’ (which sounds as meaningful as being in favour of ‘truth, justice and the American way’) Labor will need to redefine what ‘the labour movement’ – the concept that permitted the representatives of labour and those who wished to express solidarity with the working class to operate within one political party - means in the 21st century.
This would be advanced by open public discussion of policy and political options – the idea of smothering debate may not be helpful.
Antony Green has observed that the NSW ALP now has the same voter share as the party had in 1904, with the current mob possibly being the last ‘in its own right’ Labor government in the state.
If the Party gets the redefinition of what the ‘labour movement’ means wrong, this could be their fate everywhere.
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