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The ALP's 41st National Conference
As a member of the Labor Party, you soon get used to losing; if you're a member of the Left you really get used to losing. Of course, being a member of a political party - indeed any organisation - is always an experience of imperfection and compromise, and it is more the case when that organistion is significant enough to be the government of a country. The three day ALP National Conference, true to the Prime Minister's promise, was indeed full of "fair dinkum" debate although the outcomes, due to various factional allegiences was fairly obvious. On all the controversial matters the votes were roughly 215 (Right and Gillard/Ferguson Left) to 180 (National Left and independents), with a little bit of slippage on specific issues (I am increasingly impressed by the Victorian branch of the National Union of Workers, for example).
My tweeting of said conference is available but in summary; Labor voted at add Marriage Equality to the platform, albeit with a conscience vote. Sen. de Bruyn, an extreme conservative, was soundly mocked on his rhetorical questions on this issue. Labor voted to support offshore processing of asylum seekers (which knocks on the head my appeal to the National Tribunal), however it also agreed to increase the refugee intake by some 45% to 20,000 and some significant changes to the detention and visa regime. On party reform, the Right was in disarray, and the Left didn't push the advantage, leading to a vague committment to more directed elected delegates. Finally, the party also voted to agree to the sale of uranium to India, a non-signatory to the NNPT.
Astute observers will notice with a 4% change in voting delegates would have produced very different outcomes, and the onus is on the Left, for once, to actually get that handful of numbers (about 1400 people and equivalent number of union delegates), especially in an environment where thousands have been leaving the Party. More importantly however, the Left has to win the ideological debate on the key issues. The Right did put up some fairly good arguments in favour of a conscience vote on marriage equality (e.g., the Marriage Act itself was subject to a conscience vote) and offshore processing (e.g., the loss of lives by those attempting asylum), and to a much lesser extent, the justifications for sale of uranium to India (e.g., economic development for Australia and India). Indeed, when one considers both the uranium and off-shore processing issue, there's a rather worrying anti-international relations agenda in place, assuming that once again Labor tries to export asylum seekers to a non-signatory to the Refugee Convention.
Also attended two of the fringe programe events; one on how progressives can win elections and another on the UN International Year of Cooperatives. The former included representatives from the NDP and the UK Labour Party. Raised the question of co-operating with other progressive parties (e.g., Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, Greens in Canada) and the use of preferential voting. Astoundingly, the NDP representative said they were more interested in winning the non-conservative vote, rather than working with other progressives. With regard to the second issue, the UK Labour Party (who took no position on the AV), representatives claimed the referendum would result in constituency changes, which was irrelevant. The second fringe event was with the Australian Secretarian for the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives, which recommended federal legislation for cooperatives and a ministerial level position in the federal government - a far more sensible approach.
Overall much of the conference was uncontroversial, and what was uncontroversial was good. From those issues where there was significant debate the outcomes were much less than optimal, but not so bad to be utterly disastrous (uranium sales and party reform issues were the worst decisions). Whilst in Sydney I also managed to engage in a small number of social activities and plenty of reading - however that will have to wait for a subsequent post.
My tweeting of said conference is available but in summary; Labor voted at add Marriage Equality to the platform, albeit with a conscience vote. Sen. de Bruyn, an extreme conservative, was soundly mocked on his rhetorical questions on this issue. Labor voted to support offshore processing of asylum seekers (which knocks on the head my appeal to the National Tribunal), however it also agreed to increase the refugee intake by some 45% to 20,000 and some significant changes to the detention and visa regime. On party reform, the Right was in disarray, and the Left didn't push the advantage, leading to a vague committment to more directed elected delegates. Finally, the party also voted to agree to the sale of uranium to India, a non-signatory to the NNPT.
Astute observers will notice with a 4% change in voting delegates would have produced very different outcomes, and the onus is on the Left, for once, to actually get that handful of numbers (about 1400 people and equivalent number of union delegates), especially in an environment where thousands have been leaving the Party. More importantly however, the Left has to win the ideological debate on the key issues. The Right did put up some fairly good arguments in favour of a conscience vote on marriage equality (e.g., the Marriage Act itself was subject to a conscience vote) and offshore processing (e.g., the loss of lives by those attempting asylum), and to a much lesser extent, the justifications for sale of uranium to India (e.g., economic development for Australia and India). Indeed, when one considers both the uranium and off-shore processing issue, there's a rather worrying anti-international relations agenda in place, assuming that once again Labor tries to export asylum seekers to a non-signatory to the Refugee Convention.
Also attended two of the fringe programe events; one on how progressives can win elections and another on the UN International Year of Cooperatives. The former included representatives from the NDP and the UK Labour Party. Raised the question of co-operating with other progressive parties (e.g., Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, Greens in Canada) and the use of preferential voting. Astoundingly, the NDP representative said they were more interested in winning the non-conservative vote, rather than working with other progressives. With regard to the second issue, the UK Labour Party (who took no position on the AV), representatives claimed the referendum would result in constituency changes, which was irrelevant. The second fringe event was with the Australian Secretarian for the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives, which recommended federal legislation for cooperatives and a ministerial level position in the federal government - a far more sensible approach.
Overall much of the conference was uncontroversial, and what was uncontroversial was good. From those issues where there was significant debate the outcomes were much less than optimal, but not so bad to be utterly disastrous (uranium sales and party reform issues were the worst decisions). Whilst in Sydney I also managed to engage in a small number of social activities and plenty of reading - however that will have to wait for a subsequent post.
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An approach which, in my considered opinion, is the worst sort of party-political partisanship.
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I think it was Bismarck who said that the two things the public should never see are making of sausages and the making of laws, and similarly the crafting of policy can seem messy, but that's democracy for you.
After the last Canadian election I believe the NDP now see themselves as replacing the Liberals as the main opposition party in Canada, therefore they might strike more towards the centre in order to gain additional votes, but this could be at the cost of their traditional left-wing base. Their future trajectory will probably very much depend on their post-Jack Layton leadership.
And what rubbish was the Labour types talking? No one was talking about boundary changes although I heard that before the last election the Tories wanted to reduce the size of the commons by 150 seats which as I mentioned at the time would do more to hurt Labour by reducing the number of Scottish seats, a strong territory for Labour.
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The UK Labour point of view with regard to preferential voting is very similar to that of the Canadian NDP. In a position of strength in the centre-left it suits them to become a monopoly power rather than negotiate with smaller parties, such as is required with preferential voting. Personally I think Australian democracy is much stronger because we have AV. As for a reduction in the size of parliament, as long as it's conducted in proportion that makes no difference (even if I prefer more, rather than less seats, but for different reasons).
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I too consider AV a good system for democracy. I was having a debate with people at University over New Zealand's MMP system which gives cranks such as Winston Peters more seats than they probably deserve and I also bought up Israel's system which is even worse as any old rabble that can get a bit of support can get in guaranteeing weak coalition governments incorporating elements of the far right.
I would say that based on international standards Australia is probably under-represented. We have 150 lower house seats for about 23 million people, in Canada they have about 11 million people or a third more than us, yet with 308 seats in their parliament they have more than double our number. And in the UK with their 62-odd million people they have 650, in fact they're probably over-represented but I guess unlike Canada or Australia they don't have provincial or state governments....
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However, say you've got 2 large parties somewhat and very to the right of centre (a mythical Labor and Liberal in a FPTP country). And a minor party to the left (Greens). In America, people wouldn't vote for the Greens, because they misread what power they have as voters. It's embedded into their minds that it's a wasted vote. Enough people vote for the Greens, and the leftmost major party has no choice but to steer back towards the left to pick up enough votes that they have a chance of getting/staying in.
You can still steer parties in a FPTP system.
In Australia, the focus on trying to pick up more votes to the left is almost a distraction. No sane Greens voter would preference Liberal ahead of Labor. And no sane Greens representative would vote with the Liberals against Labor except when Labor have gone off the rails, so the Greens are usually a cooperative force with Labor. Might even need to form a Liberal-Nats style coalition if the Greens were to double their vote.
This might be why Labor are steering towards the right (proportional voting might not be so good!). You're in the wrong party, Lev :)
It's also been said that in America, politicians don't down party lines like they are forced to in Australia. They can't. Because it's only a 2 party system, there's much more diversity of opinion within the parties, and this fosters individual style voting.
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Of course, and for the reasons you have mentioned. FPTP requires a level of dishonesty among a large number of voters who will vote to avoid that waste. Effectively it means voting for the lesser evil, rather than voting in reverse preference of evil.
No sane Greens voter would preference Liberal ahead of Labor.
Are you suggesting that 15% of Green voters are insane? :p
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>>
> Of course, and for the reasons you have mentioned. FPTP requires a
> level of dishonesty among a large number of voters who will vote to
> avoid that waste. Effectively it means voting for the lesser evil,
> rather than voting in reverse preference of evil.
I'm alleging that you don't need to vote for the lesser of evils. If too many people vote Green in a mythical FTFP Australia, and Labor would have to start steering left on some key issues to pick those voters back up (somehow without alienating too many people that would then feel closer to the Liberals).
>> No sane Greens voter would preference Liberal ahead of Labor.
>>
> Are you suggesting that 15% of Green voters are insane? :p
Quite :P
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I don't think that would happen under FPTP. Introduce FPTP and the existing Greens voters would move almost as a whole to Labor. This is certainly the experience from overseas, except where there is strong regional affiliations. Even in the UK, which has the peculiar situation of three major political forces under a FPTP system, the Lib-Dems (who do have strong regional support) receive significantly less in seats than what their vote would indicate.
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I also attended a National Left lecture on the Thursday night and caught the tail-end of Albanese's speech. He made a fair point with regard to the Greens when he said (to paraphrase) "What is the point of being a position to influence the government when you could be the government."
Of course, it is a lot more complex than that, not the least of all being that you can negotiate outcomes from a much stronger position when you're in the Greens, rather than the Left of the ALP, at least in the current circumstances.
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"What is the point of being a position to influence the government when you could be the government."
To stand for something, to have meaning. To give people some idea that they know what they are voting for. What is the point of being a member of a political party when that party makes their policies based on opinion polls that seemingly only poll Western Sydney? Julia Gillard used to be one of my favourite pollies; now I'm wondering where she went and who built the robot.
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Now Julia on the other hand I do think is a creature of compromise and pragmatism.. Which is why she's less of the "real Julia" (to recall a phrase) now than she was when she was Deputy PM...
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Martin Luther King Jnr. made a very good comment along these lines:
Which comes back to that comment you made about Rudd not taking up the double dissolution for "the greatest moral challenge of our time". It was downhill from there for him. Yet, here we are with a price on emissions under Gillard's leadership.
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If he had called a DD I suspect it would have been won and won fairly convincingly.
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The alternative strategy, of shifting the politics of middle Australia, is an anathema to them. Which means they are constantly in a position of compromising sound principles and not displaying leadership qualities. OTOH, some of the left are so unshifting in matters of principle they will be outmaneuvered and out-negotiated every time.
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(Although I do adhere to WC Fields: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.")