So John Della Bosca, the NSW state government minister, thinks it’s “inappropriate” to threaten Labor members with expulsion from their party.
Someone should have told Joe McDonald.
McDonald, you will recall, was the building union official chucked out of the ALP, not because a court found him guilty but precisely because it didn’t. In celebration of his “not guilty” result, McDonald told journalists that he was back and that John Howard would soon be gone.
That was all it took. The comments were “unacceptable”, Kevin Rudd declared. He demanded — and received — McDonald’s expulsion.
Compare that case to the charges of disloyal conduct laid by the Alexandria branch against Morris Iemma and Michael Costa.
Iemma and Costa stand accused of acting contrary to “the principles and solidarity of the party” by trying to sell off the NSW electricity industry.
Given Della Bosca’s umbrage, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Labor’s list of principles contains a passage advocating wholesale privatisations (right next to the section that lists celebrating Howard’s departure as an expellable offense).
Not quite. The first paragraph under objectives actually still runs as follows:
The Australian Labor Party … has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other antisocial features in these fields.
In fact, while we’re poking around inside the ALP’s crusty old rulebook, we might note that the constitution actually mandates an infinitely more inclusive procedure for generating new ideas than the 2020 forum. In theory, anyone who thinks they’ve got something to contribute can join the Labor party, even without being Cate Blanchett or Hugh Jackman. As a member, they can attend branch meetings; they can elect delegates; they can go to the national conference.
As Section D of the rulebook explains, “policy … is not made by directives from the leadership, but by resolutions originating from branches, affiliated unions and individual Party members.”
Sure, it’s a long time since individual party members really shaped Labor’s policy (and even longer since anyone took the socialisation objective seriously), and that’s partly why Rudd’s claims about 2020 as a new way of doing politics have a certain currency. But if the ALP leaders can transform their own democratic structures into kiss up-kick down control freakery, it doesn’t bode well for the implementation of non-binding 2020 recommendations.
Jeff Sparrow is the editor of Overland.
Minor correction, Jeff. It was good spin for Labor to announce Joe McDonald was expelled or otherwise thrown out of the Labor Party in middle of lastyear but a few months later, just before the election, it slipped out that Labor’s WA Secretary went to see Joe McDonald and ask him to resign form the party for Kevin’s sake. Alas, the media wasn’t interested in correcting the public lie and false image of tough Kevin Rudd throwing Joe McDonald out of the ALP. The whole thing was a dishonest stunt – did our PM know about it?
As best I can tell there are 3 axioms (maybe 4) in modern society/politics – individual freedom (conservatives), social/economic justice (labor/labour right to organise collectively for this), an ecologically sustainable existence (G/greens). The fourth just maybe is democratic process, maybe (AD gazumped by Greens). On the weekend Summit we saw the traditionals no.1 & 2 pay lip service but really seek to freeze out the 3rd and 4th, in pure denial of the enormity of our real situation and limited ecological future. The science is all there and it’s ugly. In this sense nothing has changed. But every year the 3rd will grow and the 1st two will shrink. When the sea rises several metres … well … politics will change completely and Rudd will look naked to more than just this writer. That’s my 2020 vision of sorts.
This is just the sort of party that I wouldn’t join.