NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES by Eric Blair
You may be asking what does a Harry Potter prophecy have to do with progressive politics? It’s simple really. The Australian Labor Party and the Greens have over the past few years been two parties involved in one of the most passive aggressive (and sometimes outright aggressive) war ever fought – one full of secret tactics and snide remarks about the ‘old parties’. This war is for the right to be called the progressive party in Australian politics. The Greens ran their campaign for the 2013 federal election around the idea of ‘standing up for what matters,’ and to any progressive, that’s exactly what they are doing. They have a platform of compassion for asylum seekers, marriage equality, investing in education, and clean energy. Who wouldn’t like the sound of that? I’ll tell you who loves it – disengaged progressives and would-be Labor members and voters. The Greens are able to campaign on these issues and not worry immediately about the practicality of delivering on them – simply because they are a minor party with almost no chance of forming outright government. In the process, they are appealing to ideological voters that would ordinarily vote for the progressive party of choice – the Australian Labor Party. This is not new. In fact, their political strategy in the 2000s was dependent on deposing Labor Party MPs to acquire votes. In the past half-decade we’ve seen the Greens’ membership rise while the ALP membership has dropped nationwide. Now, while this may not seem significant, if more progressives flock to the Greens it is likely to have a profound effects for the ALP and the future of progressive politics in Australia. Unless they achieve another hung parliament, the Greens ability to influence the legislative agenda is likely to be limited in the future, marginalising their progressive voters. However, by the time support swings back to the ALP, the nature of Australian politics might have irreversibly been changed, leaving very little room for true progressive policies. The longer this continues, the more and more likely it becomes that we will see an entire
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ideological shift to the right in Australian politics. This is because with every vote the Greens take from the left, the Labor Party needs to get one more from the right. This leads Australia away from more progressive reformist social policies such as humane onshore processing, and towards hard-line policies such as the PNG solution. This then forces the Liberal Party to go even further right to make up for the votes that the ALP have poached from the centre-right – a prime example of which being the oneupmanship regarding asylum seeker policies at the last election.
WHAT DOES A HARRY POTTER PROPHECY HAVE TO DO WITH PROGRESSIVE POLITICS? The internal effect of the Greens’ growth upon the ALP is equally profound. As the Greens’ party membership grows, naturally the left faction of the ALP will decline. The left faction, having been the champion of socially progressive values – gender equality, LGBT rights, environmentalism, and reconciliation and land rights among many others – may no longer be able to put up an internal fight for the progressive heart of the ALP with withering membership numbers. This would not only result in the ALP membership pushing to the right for votes, but a long-term ideological shift to the right within the party. A potent example of this shift occurred on December 3rd 2011. The ALP national conference decided to amend the party platform to support a conscience vote on marriage equality instead of changing
the platform to endorse amending the Marriage Act directly. The count went the way of the conscience vote, 208 votes to 184. If the left faction (who supported changing the platform altogether) had more members, Australia would have had marriage equality today. Now, am I suggesting that the Greens are some evil collection of people who hate muggles? Am I suggesting that the ALP should attack and discredit the Greens until their members come back to the party? Of course not. In recent years, the Greens have been acting as the moral compass of progressive politics. They have kept progressive issues in the limelight and provided a strong outlet for the progressive side of politics. But this progressive moral compass has almost no way of effectively changing policy unless the Greens are blessed with another hung Parliament. If left-wing politics were to have a viable future in Australia, the ALP would need to reclaim the progressive moral compass, fight for progressive issues, and win back these lost members by truly starting to act like the progressive party. In the past the Labor Party has been the stalwart for progressives – creating strong legislation such as Medicare, free tertiary education, and the Racial Discrimination, Sex Discrimination and Native Title Acts. If the Labor Party wants to maintain its historic platform of progressive change, the Labor Party needs to reclaim the left, and bring back those 9,500 politically-minded lefties to the Party. If they fail to do so, the Greens will continue to annex the left of the ALP, to draw away progressive members from the ALP, and still won’t have the ability to govern. This will limit the opportunity for progressive change within the Labor Party and leave it up to the conservatives to legislate while progressives are resigned to shouting from the sideline.