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On 7 December I forwarded a highly important article by Paul Kelly on the
extent to which unions are now controlling the Labor Party. A copy of that
article, entitled Clueless, leaderless and blind, is on my web site
www.ipe.net.au
Below is an article in similar vein by former Labor leader, Mark Latham,
entitled Labor: running on empty. Latham refers to Kelly's perception.
These "exposures" come at a time of reports of increasingly aggressive
industrial action by unions based on the Fair Work Australia legislation and
the union-stacked tribunal that administers it.
Given the enormous power unions are able to exercise under legislation
compiled by someone who is now Prime Minister, who has given no sign of
recognising the problem, and who has in any event now lost authority to
adopt any reform program, Australia now faces a major crisis in the labour
market. Upwards revisions of forecast levels of unemployment to the high 5s
are already being made because of deteriorating economic conditions overseas
and in most parts of the Australian economy. It may not be long before the
5s are replaced by 6s.
Des Moore
Labor: running on empty
(Article published in AFR, 15 Dec 2011)
By Mark Latham
When people think of the great Labor splits, they think of 1916, 1931 and
1955, when a significant number of federal MPs defected from the party. Now
a new split, with a new series of defections, is under way.
It has not captured media headlines or directly threatened Labor's
parliamentary numbers.
For this is a different kind of schism, played out in a different sphere of
politics. It is, however, no less debilitating than its three predecessors.
Labor's rank and file membership is deserting the party, repulsed by the
heavy hand of factional control.
Due to the embarrassment it brings, Labor has tried to keep the nature of
the split hidden from public view. The full details of its membership
records and internal ballots are secret. Recently, however, two valuable
pieces of research have exposed the truth of the party's grassroots
disintegration.
Kevin Rudd's former speech writer, Troy Bramston, has chronicled the
long-term decline in Labor's national membership: from 150,000 in the 1930s,
to 50,000 in the 1990s, to just 11,665 members who voted in the ballot for
the national presidency last month. Also of assistance, former NSW party
official Luke Foley has broken down the state records by membership
category.
Only 16 per cent of ALP members in NSW belong to trade unions affiliated to
the party. By far the biggest category (55 per cent) is concessional
membership - that is, people outside the workforce.
When extrapolated to the presidency ballot, Foley's figures expose the
emptiness of Labor's structure. Of the party's 11,665 active members, only
1860 (16 per cent of the total) are likely to belong to an affiliated union.
This represents, on average, just 12 Labor unionists in each federal
electorate
- not enough for a footy team.
The notion of Labor as a trade-union based party, a grassroots organisation
of Australian workers, is a myth. When Labor MPs say they represent working
people in this country, they are mouthing a fraud. They have only a handful
of union members active in their local branches.
In practice, union power is exercised through centralised control: union
secretaries donating money and staff to marginal seats and rounding up the
numbers at Labor Party conferences.
This process has institutionalised Labor's split. As the power of
union-based factionalism has increased, branch members have left the party.
Out in the suburbs, working people and young families have had no reason to
maintain their involvement.
Compared with rival community organisations, the return on ALP membership is
minimal. Campaign groups such as GetUp! have benefited from this
shortcoming.
The union secretaries have actively encouraged the marginalisation of
Labor's membership. Let me give two examples. When he was the head of Unions
NSW, John Robertson openly declared branch meetings to be a waste of time.
Now he's the leader of the NSW Parliamentary Labor Party. More recently,
Right-wing factional boss Paul Howes heavily criticised his local branches,
saying he couldn't be bothered attending their meetings.
The paradox is scarifying. Union officials who eschew Labor locally are able
to wield substantial power inside the party at a state and national level.
Make no mistake: this has been a deliberate strategy to split the ALP,
turning it into an oligarchy of union officials. None of the decisions at
the recent national conference will reverse this pattern. How could they?
The union leaders- cum-factional-chiefs in control of the numbers are not
about to cut their own throats.
Never forget the key number: 12 trade unionists per electorate. Everything
else is Labor-inspired spin to convince the media that the party is still a
legitimate grassroots force.
In large part, this spin has worked. Among the scores of journalists in
Canberra, only Paul Kelly from The Australian writes about Labor through the
prism of its organisational schism. This is one of the biggest stories in
Australian politics but the press gallery (sans Kelly) remains mute.
In 2005, I was the first senior figure to catalogue the nature of Labor's
dysfunction when I published my diaries.
"The bastard's gone mad," the party's spin doctors whispered. "None of it
can be as bad as he claims." In fact, it was bad and getting worse, as the
subsequent period has demonstrated.
A dozen unionists in each seat - that's the real madness of what the
Australian Labor Party has become.
Mark Latham is a former Labor leader.
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