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Grassroots Labor gets a say at last
Volume 28 #15
September 17, 2013
Candles in the dark It can be easy to light a candle to false hope in the bubble of Byron Shire, given the beautiful natural environment and the saccharine tide of spiritual flimflammery which washes over us like a toxic golden syrup. But anyone who watches the news – and thinks about it – knows that all is not right on planet Earth. Especially when Paris Hilton is more popular with morning news producers than is composting. However, there are a few genuine candles alight in the dark, enough to buoy the spirits of the jaded newspaper hack. Both shone at me from ABC TV this week. (The ABC itself is a cause for hope, an oasis of intelligence in the desert of commercial television, Channel Ten’s The Report notwithstanding.) At the Eureka science awards, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki (drkarl. com) flew his optimism flag, declaring, ‘Over time, we have now become, on a percentage basis, the most peaceful society that has ever existed on this planet with the least numbers of deaths and injuries against another human, on a percentage basis, ever.’ Here’s some backup for that bold claim in this Huffington Post article: http://huff.to/r3M9mp. I suppose also wars are quicker these days; the notoriously brutal Hundred Years War between England and France ran from 1337 to 1453, with the occasional break for tea or croissants. The other candle burning brightly was on Gardening Australia: artist, farmer and recycler Joost Bakker (byjoost.com) has created the Silo By Joost restaurant in Melbourne’s Hardware Street where literally everything is recycled. ‘We can live in a world that is sustainable and doesn’t need to have an impact and we don’t need to put anything in landfill. Everything endlessly reusable and recyclable – that’s my philosophy,’ he said. Read the story here: http://bit.ly/18pi6BR. My goodness, so much optimism when a conservative government led by an inarticulate man has just been installed. Must be the coffee kicking in… Michael McDonald
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o the dust has not even settled and we are into another bloody election. But this time it is the election that we, or at least the Labor Party, had to have. For the first time ever, the selection of a leader will not be left to the caucus, which in practice meant the faction leaders. For the first time ever, the rank and file – the ordinary, grass roots members – will have a say. And this is the best way – just about the only way – for Australia’s oldest political party to demonstrate that it has been listening to the electorate, that it can recognise where it has failed and that it is capable off doing something serious about it. Even after the tragic farce of the last six and more years, and the near disaster of the election, it nearly didn’t happen. The right-wing factional warlords, both past and present, fought like cornered rats to preserve their own privileges. Stephen Conroy was so desperate that he rallied behind his old enemy, Bill Shorten, urging that Shorten be appointed unopposed and without debate; the alternative was just too messy and untidy to contemplate. Graham Richardson used his bully pulpit in the Murdoch Press to warn that even the smallest concession to democracy would destroy the party forever. Why, it could be weeks – even months – before a leader emerged, and in the meantime Tony Abbott would rule without an effective opposition. Well, yes, but actually this was going to happen anyway; Abbott is not going to recall parliament to interrupt his political honeymoon, and if he does, the widely respected Chris Bowen is the party’s acting leader. The chair will not be
empty. But what, spluttered Richo, if the US bombs Syria? Labor will not even have a foreign affairs spokesman. True, but it might also occur to the legendary knee-capper of Sussex Street that this would be the least of our worries. Barack Obama is hardly likely to change course at the behest of the shadow foreign minister of Australia. What both Conroy and Richardson were deliberately ignoring was the simple fact that caucus unanimously endorsed the new system less than three months ago. If their decision was now to be subverted as
Labor seeking salvation which is almost certainly false. Why would anyone flock to an empty standard, to a party prepared to desert all principle for temporary political advantage, to cynically wave through policies which it knows are evil, destructive and against all reason? A frequent charge against old Labor was that it was only interested in power, that it had no firm and clearly articulated platform. The idea that it should confirm this condemnation in spades by junking one of the few policies the electorate understood as real
The right-wing factional war lords, both past and present, fought like cornered rats to preserve their own privileges. by Mungo MacCallum part of a factional fix, it would send the worst possible signal not only to the membership but to the wider electorate: nothing had changed and nothing ever would change. The old guard, the faceless men, were still in charge. The party had learned nothing and forgotten nothing and stood for nothing. Which brings us to the mindless calls of some members (stand up Nick Champion and Richard Marles) for the leadership to abandon its climate change stance and allow Abbott to abolish the pricing of carbon and move to his direct action policy. The argument, such as it is, seems to be that Abbott’s formula of magic trees and paid polluters would be exposed as the absurdity it always has been, which is probably true, and that the punters would then come flocking back to
commitments is idiotic to the point of suicide. The one thing all serious commentators across the political spectrum agree upon is that if Labor is to survive as a viable and relevant political force, it has to win back the trust of the electorate; it cannot rely on appealing to niche groups among either the old blue-collar conservatives or the new left progressives. And before the party can credibly ask the electorate to trust Labor, it has to show that it trusts itself. The reform process must open the party up and make it inclusive and democratic. There are organisations which benefit from being managed along hieratic, authoritarian lines – the Catholic church, for instance, and the metropolitan daily newspapers. But the Labor Party isn’t
one of them – at least it isn’t if it wants to remain a party of mass membership and mass appeal. And as experience has shown, meaningful reform can only come from the top. Thus the most important single question the two vastly different, but undoubtedly wellqualified candidates should be asked in the weeks ahead is to spell out their unequivocal commitment to continuing the process begun by Kevin Rudd with the change to the election of the leader. Anthony Albanese, as a member of the often downtrodden left, should have less trouble making this pledge that Bill Shorten, a warrior from the dominant right, but Shorten has shown that he can think outside the square and is not bound by the shibboleths of the past. His past life as a union heavy involved in plotting the downfall of the last two prime ministers means that he carries a lot of baggage, but he is not beyond redemption. His summary rejection of the moral and political obtuseness of supporters like Marles and Champion is a good start. As is the new election. It follows a course taken by the English Labour Party some time ago. At the time the move towards democratisation was attacked, reviled and branded as unworkable by those with the most to lose. But a glance at the current polling, with the elected leader Ed Milliband well ahead of the Tory prime minister David Cameron, suggests that it really isn’t such a bad idea. And if it pisses off people like Conroy and Richardson, that alone is sufficient justification for giving it a try. Q See Mungo’s video at
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Ph: 0488 555 887 10 September 17, 2013 The Byron Shire Echo
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