Yes, of course, we want Howard out at the federal election. Yes, of course we'll vote Labor where there is no working-class socialist candidate, and give Labor our transfers even when there is.
But it does not follow that we should not criticise, challenge - indeed, denounce - Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
Sharan Burrow and Jeff Lawrence said that they were "disappointed" by Kevin Rudd's and Julia Gillard's latest industrial relations policy statement, at the end of August.
A few trade union leaders have been more outspoken. Kevin Reynolds, secretary of the CFMEU construction division in Western Australia, said: "It's very, very clear that [Rudd] is no friend of the labour movement... He's made it clear that he will do whatever he has to do, and sell out whoever he has to, whether it's his own wife, his brother or trade unionists, to win this election".
Australian Workers Union WA secretary Tim Daly said the ALP leaders' policy "has virtually given the Business Council everything they want".
What's needed, and what's missing, apart from a good but still small effort initiated by the CEPU in Victoria, is a public, political campaign for the workers' rights which the ALP leaders want to keep suppressed.
The union leaders let Rudd's policy go through without recording any votes against it at the ALP conference in April. They have responded to his new statement not by demanding a special ALP conference to call him to account, but by continuing to intone "Howard out!" as if it is a magic spell.
Union leaders tell us that they are playing a waiting game. Shut up for now, don't put demands on Kevin Rudd or criticise him beyond murmurs about being "disappointed", wait until he gets into office - and then put pressure on him to concede.
This waiting game is a losing game.
* For now, Kevin Rudd needs support from trade unionists, to mobilise the vote for him. In office for four or five years, he won't.
* If the unions tell him now that he can betray as much as he likes, and they will still limit their politics to "Howard out!", then he will bank on them doing the same in four or five years' time, however much he betrays in the meantime.
* How will the unions put pressure on Rudd once he is elected? Lobbying and cajoling won't work. Only by mobilising the rank and file can we put pressure.
* Responsible trade unionists can't treat the rank and file like dumb footsoldiers, to be switched on and off at will. The working class is not a militarily-disciplined infantry force, to be told to sit still in the trenches for now, patiently enduring Rudd's bombardment, and then to "go over the top" when the word comes down. You can build a strong trade union movement only by telling the truth to the workers.
* The union leaders now are passively accepting that Rudd will blast them to bits if they do "go over the top" after the election. That means, whatever excuses they make now about playing canny and waiting for the right time, they actually have no intention of "going over the top" even later.
* The idea that a fake unanimity behind Rudd is necessary for the ALP to beat Howard in the federal election is false. Voters aren't stupid, nor do they necessarily want to vote for a bunch of weaselers who are obviously pretending to be unanimous when they really aren't.
* Parties with obvious and lively internal conflicts can win elections. The ALP in 1972, when Gough Whitlam won, had much louder critical left-wing voices inside it than the ALP has had in all its losing elections since 1996.
* Even if fake unanimity would win the election, the bargain would be a short-sighted one. A strong labour movement with clear political ideas of its own can win big concessions even from a hard-right government. A labour movement scared to say boo even when it is treated with contempt will win nothing even it has a supposedly "Labor" government.
* The argument for the Accord in 1983 was the same: it may not be perfect, but the unions must back the ALP leaders or else... This time it's worse, because the Accord was at least supposed to give workers some positive gains in return for buckling under. But, looking back at it, who can say that the Accord was the right choice?
The ALP leaders preen themselves as strike-breakers. Julia Gillard was interviewed by Tony Jones for ABC Lateline on 28 August.
Jones: ... Would you be prepared to break a strike against your own IR reforms if necessary?
Gillard: Industrial action that is unlawful will be dealt with, with the full force of the law... Employers will have quick and effective remedies...
Jones: So if unions... struck over... IR reforms - you'd be prepared, a Labor government would be prepared to break that strike?
Gillard: ... there will be effective and quick remedies....
Jones: Strike breaking?
Gillard: Absolutely... we don't want to see industrial action. We understand that in a limited window when bargaining for a new collective agreement following a secret ballot, that it is appropriate to protect industrial action. Any other form of industrial action, for whatever cause it is taken, is not protected and people should expect to feel the full force of the law.
What Rudd and Gillard offer now is little more than a series of amendments to Howard's legislation..
* AWAs will remain for two years. Low-paid workers who signed AWAs putting them below the award safety net will stay there for up to five years.
Bosses can push "transitional individual agreements" (AWAs in all but name) in the first two years of a Rudd government. Even after that, there will be "more flexible common-law contracts" (again, AWAs Mark 2) for workers earning more than $100,000, and they will be exempted from awards. Below that level, bosses will be able to negotiate individual deals using new "flexibility clauses" in awards and collective deals.
* Howard's police force for construction, the ABCC, will remain until 2012, and then be replaced by an ABCC Mark 2, part of "Fair Work Australia".
* Rudd will keep the laws that limit union access to work sites and the current ban on secondary boycotts in the Trade Practices Act.
* Collective bargaining? Lawyer Anthony Forsyth sums it up well in The Age (31 August): "Labor's policy fails to tackle a major problem of the bargaining framework that has operated since 1996 - the ability of an employer to simply ignore the workforce's desire to reach a collective agreement and to have their union negotiate on their behalf... tribunal intervention [will be] essentially a voluntary process... some employers will still decide to 'tough it out'...
"Labor's more recent IR policy statement makes a huge song and dance about the virtues of 'genuine non-union agreements'. Rudd has made it crystal clear that unions will not get a guernsey in collective agreement negotiations in non-unionised enterprises..."
Forsyth sums it up: "Rudd is following the lead of former British prime minister Tony Blair, who faced down unions by promising there would be "no going back" to pre-Thatcher industrial confrontation".
Rudd is not just being cautious, or a bit right-wing. Like Blair, he is out to deny, obstruct, and demolish working-class representation in politics.
The question is, will the unions carry on letting him get away with it?