Exactly 40 years ago a disgruntled ALP delegate challenged his parliamentary leader with the question: “Whose party is it anyway – his or ours?”
The delegate was the left’s hero Jim Cairns and the question was written for him by his then script-writer Phillip Adams. The leader was of course Gough Whitlam, who was attempting the crash-through-or-crash reforms to the party’s structure and policy which finally made Labor electable after 23 years in opposition. It is now a matter of history that Whitlam won, a win for which both Cairns and Adams became belatedly grateful.
But he did so without providing a definitive answer to the question: does the ultimate control of the ALP rest with the rank and file membership or with the elected parliamentary leader? The vote against New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma’s move to privatise the state’s electricity industry at the weekend is another attempt to find out.
The rules are clear enough: the ALP conferences, state and national, are the supreme policy making bodies of the party and all members of parliament are bound by their decisions. No ifs, no buts. But rules are made to be broken and strong leaders over the years have frequently interpreted conference decisions to suit themselves.
Recognising this political reality, conferences these days usually try to restrict themselves to statements of principle and long term goals which leave the leader plenty of room to manoeuvre. But there are times when they assert themselves in an attempt to establish, as one delegate put it on Saturday, who has the biggest dick in the Labor Party.
The current stand-off is one of those occasions. If he is to crash through Iemma will have to defy a specific direction from conference, and one with overwhelming support. The vote of 702-107 means that it was not only the union delegates opposed to the sell-off; nearly three-quarters of the branch delegates joined them.
There are times when a leader can get away with a deliberate breech of party rules; Kevin Rudd did so when he announced that he alone, and not caucus, would appoint his ministry. But Rudd was a leader newly triumphant, the saviour who had led his party back to power after nearly 12 years in the wilderness. Iemma heads an old and tired government rampant with cronyism and suspected of more serious corruption. He himself is reasonably popular, but the leader of the privatisation push, treasurer Michael Costa, personifies everything the voters dislike about the Macquarie Street mafia. He has said in so many words that he is going ahead and his critics can get f-cked: he doesn’t care if they expel him.
This of course is the ultimate sanction. It has actually been used: Premier William Holman was expelled for breaching party policy by supporting conscription during World War I. Admittedly that was nearly a century ago, but the precedent is there. Iemma, more cautious than Costa, is still hoping to avoid it. He can point to caucus endorsement of his plan, and also to the finding by a committee headed by former Premier Barrie Unsworth – a much respected figure in the party – that it is in fact in accord with broad Labor policy. It also has the support of Rudd and the feds, not to mention the business community. But it has been decisively kyboshed by the representatives of Labor’s membership.
So: whose party is it – his or theirs? Perhaps this time we will find out.
Just saw the 7.30 Report package here in NSW with Deborah Cornwall reporting: Much discussion of the union movement being accommodated while it’s role in society has eroded. Robertson strongly points out 85% of the public don’t support a sell off, and that most branch delegates similarly. What troubles me about the ideological critics of the unions is that there is constant and determined airbrush of their level of coverage in industry sectors combined with many, many free riders on past campaigns for rights and conditions. So just like the big asbestos resolution it’s probably the COVERAGE, not the raw union membership, that best describes the unions’ relationship to the democratic feeling of the people here in NSW at least on public energy assets.
Sure Tom McLoughlin as far as your 7:12 PM goes I agree of course.But you are speaking about a specific instance when the process may have been corrupted, I was referring to the general principle that governments are elected to govern and should not be answerable to outside parties, either union or for that matter business interests. I know that that may sound naive and utopian, but as I said I was referring to the general principle of how democracy should work.
“But he did so without providing a definitive answer to the question: does the ultimate control of the ALP rest with the rank and file membership or with the elected parliamentary leader.”
He may not have given a definitive answer, but as far as I am concerned (although not a NSW voter) the ultimate control should be with the persons elected by the long suffering voters, not by a conference with no mandate from the people. Certainly when a party stands at a general election the voters need to have an idea of the party’s political program, but from the time that they are elected to office the buck stops with them. If they transgress the people will have their say at the next election. I believe it’s known as democracy.
Steve and Tom, you are wasting your grey matter. The issue is: whether the residents of NSW deserve to have assets built up through the years sold to foreign interests in order to satisfy some esetoric economic principle.
The likely buyers of our assets will be the Saudi, Singaporean or Chinese governments – all totalitarian. For goodness’ sake, wake up! The power company which supplies NSW soon may well be no different from the next corrupted and worthless Enron.
Do you enjoy visiting Sydney airport, now that the cheapest drop-off is about $20? Do you enjoy paying MacBank tolls to use the State’s roads? Australia used to be a nation of can-do folk who worked together to build the SECV under General Sir John Monash. the Snowy River Scheme and the Electricity Commission of NSW, the postal and telephone system and so forth.
Are we really better off by selling most of these things? Are we a prouder and fairer nation?
Sell-offs of public enterprises are always failures.
Well that mandate theory might hold more water Steve Martin, if Saturday’s front page story was not about 800 business donors receiving legal letters from the NSW electoral commission to please explain why they ought not be prosecuted for failure to disclose political donations … leading up to the March 2007 state election. In other words not only did Iemma deliberately lie about the public energy policy, but he did it largely financed by big business in an irregular way. So no, it’s not about which theory of democracy is better – party or elected. It’s about honesty versus dishonesty. And that’s a real principle with real implications for systemic corruption worth taking a stand over. I feel you will probably agree with the concern when put like that too?