Christian
radical reflections 46,
October 22, 2004 AD
How can Labor now resume its historical place on our landscape as a progressive political movement?
After the 1974 election the PM Gough Whitlam addressed electors in these terms: "What you have done - and I congratulate you upon it - is to restore the two party system to a healthier state than it has been in Australia for twenty years. It's only a sound two party system which has made democracy work effectively in the countries of the English speaking world."
Looking back now on this statement, one has to wonder. Have the subsequent 30 years been a matter of a healthy two party system? Are we prepared to say that the 1980s and 1990s when the Opposition flagged through the Labor Government's reforms was healthy for Australia? It was then that the industrial relations system and nation-building was given away in the market euphoria of "economic rationalism". It was then that Labor deconstructed the Universities and it knows that it hasn't won back the droves of academics whose opinions were over-ridden by NTEU apparatchiks during that phase of our nation's recent history.
It is quite simple, really. It is almost as if the question answers itself. Labor can resume its historical place if it accepts itself as a party of a significant minority. If it did this, it would also have to admit that the Liberal Coalition is a government put in office by a significant albeit privileged minority. We have discussed this already. The losers were well-known long before election day. They were, and are, all those who now have no representative apart from the one they didn't vote for, the one they voted against.
Why doesn't Labor outline a 20 year vision from their combined social democratic standpoint?
Why doesn't it adopt a stance which takes the Australian public into its confidence? The current leader says that Labor knows what it believes. Well if it does then it needs a party apparatus that gets out of its factional ruts and while explaining why it is willing to be in Opposition for as long as it takes, commits itself, and wants itself to be judged by, the building of a system of parliamentary representation that justly and fairly gives all citizens a 'fair go', valid representation within the chambers of the country's parliaments. Why not? Labor should be promoting the developing of more bona fide political parties. It doesn't have to compromise on its principles to do this. It can limit its advocacy to those parties that have genuine political philosophy that covers every department of Government and national activity. It doesn't have to support "single issue splinter" parties. It doesn't have to change its own view of membership in its own ranks. It would be a simple step, and a step forward of great national significance. All it needs to do is to develop policies with the winsome admission that it cannot adequately represent all the people that sometimes, and often, give their vote to Labor candidates. Labor must get real and embrace the reform of our parliamentary system of representation.
It's time as a mass party that could represent all Australians (or 50.1%) is over. It's gone. Get over it. It is time Labor changed it's name to the Social Democratic Party of Australia, embraced fundamental reform proposals for all levels of government and presented itself to the Australian people as the party that leads the way in electoral reform, even if it cannot lead the way as a single party Government of this country any more.
The gerrymandered ballot paper by which voters cannot cast a vote of conscience if they want their vote to go to neither Labor nor Liberal is a clear indication of the embedded injustice in our system of political representation, and speaks volumes of our national need for genuine electoral reform at all levels. It also speaks volumes of Labor's neglect of the many citizens who have voted for it's candidates over the years even though they are not convinced socialists. Many vote Labor because they suspect Labor is more open to such an inclusive system of political representation but without Labor actually embracing the need for fundamental electoral reform. Not all citizens can be represented in a two party system. Gough Whitlam's view was never right and it has certainly has lost all credibility now except for a few ideologists.
Let Labor - which has a pretty constant 38% first preference in the current system - aim to be the first to limit itself to a goal of obtaining 38% of the seats in a reformed Parliament - not 34% and certainly not 54%.
Let Labor encourage the development of authentically new political parties, and let it be open in a new and constructive way, offering its assistance to such groups of loyal citizens who want to become viable alternative political presence, wherever they spring up, and thereby foment a new style of open public political education, debate and discussion.
Let Labor look ahead and find a way to be truly progressive in an electoral and political sense. There is an incredibly fertile field available which, with the right leadership, could help to transform the political landscape in ways that will make John Howard's victories look the shallow opportunistic and narrow-minded self-interested, morally relativistic reaction that they are.
Let Labor spell out a 20 year plan to reform the political life of the country from the grass-roots up and thereby provide an authentic basis for an Australian republic, that honours its indigenous people, at peace with its region and building a united South West Pacific on a model that learns the lessons of European Union.
While seeking to work co-operatively with the Greens, ACF, ATSIC or what is left of it, and other parties that embrace such a long-term vision of reform, Labor should re-visit it's Christian socialist heritage (in particular R H Tawney) and gain new perspective from which to negotiate with the National Party.
By re-visiting Christian socialism might also provide itself with fresh insights from a Christian understanding of military conflict. It would strengthen its commitment to just war criteria as the grounds for rejecting the doctrine of pre-emption and accepting the validity of other military operations. Australia needs to turn away from the craven compliance with the kind of militarism that tries in vain to justify the pre-emptive and disastrous USA war in Iraq of recent time. We need to make our alliances with the USA after we have re-discovered our own regional and national identity. The Howard Government has significantly shaped Australia's regional and global future on the anvil of America's National Security Strategy, and that needs to be challenged by a new social democratic alternative, even if it will never be the only political view that Labor will have to reckon with in a future (leftward) coalition Government.
There are other matters that readers of this site will know I would be keen to advocate here, namely, the reinvigoration of the reconciliation process with indigenous Australians. As well the Labor Party needs to say "sorry" about another matter - the disastrous university reforms of the 1990s which have made life extremely bitter for academics and students who, left in the lurch, trying to accommodate themselves to a society dominated by Liberal Party machinations that would take the country further down the path pioneered by John Dawkins.
Is this a possibility? Yes it is. It will however require a political maturity that cannot come into its own as long as Labor remains committed to a two-party monopoly in Parliamentary representation.
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October 2004 © Christian Radical
Reflections, is written by Bruce C Wearne (PhD), 29 Lawrence Rd., Point
Lonsdale Vic 3225 AUSTRALIA, 61-3-5258-3913. Each edition may be
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