Australian election: why the dilemmas?

Submitted by AWL on 4 September, 2013 - 5:40

The union movement, when it stirs itself even a little, has the power to win things. It is only six years since the union movement ran a large campaign against Howard's WorkChoices. And union action meant that the Federal Court in Brisbane, on 16 August, felt it had to examine the details of the court orders and acquit Bob Carnegie on contempt of court charges.

Yet the labour movement has no real voice in the federal election on 7 September. Most unions are sullenly lining up behind Kevin Rudd, with scarcely a word about his foul moves against refugee rights; some support Green candidates here and there for tactical reasons.

Many union leaderships and the ACTU are on record against the demonisation of asylum seekers. The ACTU executive resolved unanimously against Rudd's policy of sending refugees to PNG, and declared that the political debate had been "damaging and destructive" and that it was shaped by “prejudice and racism”. But there is no union campaign for refugee rights. "Labor for Refugees" has dwindled and is now tiny.

The Australian people could be convinced to support refugees if there were a large, visible campaign for refugee rights which also explained answers to social problems within Australia, unemployment, homelessness, inequality.

But in the Australian federal election on 7 September it's hard to see a way for socialists to do more than make a moral gesture.

When the Greens raise the slogan "Seeking asylum is a human right", and protest against the competition between Labor leader Kevin Rudd and Liberal leader Tony Abbott for who can devise the foulest scheme to park refugees on (other people's) poverty-stricken islands by saying "Not with my vote", they're right.

The Greens are what they are: a middle-class party, with no organic links to the labour movement, of the same stripe as the Irish Greens which in coalition helped Fianna Fail put through huge cuts in the economic crisis. They've propped up Julia Gillard's wretched administration.

But a sizeable Green vote will register a protest against the racism. Where the Socialist Alliance is standing, its candidates will of course convey the same message and much more, but there are so few of them that the Green vote will be the major protest.

Since the Liberals are the overt party of big business, and Labor is or can be constrained by its continuing trade-union links, a first preference for Greens should be followed by a second preference for Labor.

There is evidence that Rudd's harsh turn against refugees has majority support among voters: in a poll only 20% described it as "too harsh", 40% as "about right", and 24% as "too soft". There is a little evidence that younger people are more generous-minded on this issue than older people, but only a little.

Why is it in this election socialists can only make a moral protest? Why is it so hard to see how we could have a policy and an activity in the election which would really help rally workers to resist the racist drive and prepare battle against the aggressively right-wing Liberal-National administration almost certain to be in office after 7 September?

Despite regular mutterings from Labor leaders about rebuilding party organisation, local Labor Party branch activity has mostly continued to dwindle. That is not because activists have turned to revolutionary or radical left organisations outside Labor. On the contrary, the ability of the extra-Labor socialist left to put pressure on Labor is also at a low.

Ged Kearney, president of the ACTU, has announced the union movement's attitude: "The election to be held on 7 September will be a choice between a government that respects workers’ rights and an opposition that wants to give employers more power".

As if the Rudd and Gillard governments had actually reversed Howard's WorkChoices legislation, rather than replacing it by a milder scheme which still makes strikes unlawful in almost all circumstances! As if the government had offered any help to Bob Carnegie, facing the threat of jail for helping a community protest by construction workers at the Queensland Children's Hospital, now acquitted but no thanks to Rudd or Gillard!

Probably not even Kearney herself really believes her statement. No serious trade-unionist, even the most Labor-loyal, sees the election choice on 7 September as other than between severe restrictions on workers' rights, and even more severe restrictions by Abbott.

The Australian Education Union backs Labor with the thought: "Overall, the Coalition plan for extra schools funding comes up $7 billion short. Their proposal would deliver just one third of that committed by the Labor government". But AEU members also know that Labor has cut higher education funding drastically (and as a result the NTEU is running a campaign calling for first-preference votes for the Greens for the Senate, in which the Greens could hold the balance).

Overall, the Sydney Morning Herald (9 August) reports: "Some unions are set to spend less than 2010 or withdraw support altogether... Community and Public Sector Union national secretary, Nadine Flood, said her union would suspend all support in protest at the job losses likely to flow from the government's planned public sector cuts announced last week... Mr Rudd... is renowned for his antipathy to the ALP industrial wing that he has long viewed as having too much influence on the party".

Most union websites have no or only token references to the election.

None has an upfront statement for refugee rights. None has upfront discussion on preparing industrial and street action against the coming onslaught by an Abbott government.

The ETU (Electrical Trades Union) in Victoria is upfront about support for Green candidate Adam Bandt in Melbourne, under the slogan "Standing up for what matters: rights at work"; but that is support for one particular candidate (a labour lawyer who formerly worked with the ETU), not a policy, and is accompanied by a declaration that the ETU "is also considering donating campaign funds to Bob Katter's [maverick right-wing populist] Australian Party". The Australian Party puffs on its website a more-or-less admiring profile of Katter by a journalist who comments: "he talks about refugees in a way that implies that they are a plague".

Dean Mighell, former leader of the ETU in Victoria, took a job with Katter's party, then separated from it for obscure reasons, and now has come out stridently against Bandt on grounds of Bandt's support for gun control.

The NTEU is running a campaign which calls for first-preference votes for the Greens for the Senate, in which the Greens could hold the balance.

The ETU in Queensland, which ran a billboard campaign in the state against the Bligh Labor government's privatisations effectively calling for an "anyone but Labor" vote, and had state secretary Peter Simpson expelled from the ALP in 2011, now says that the "news [about Abbott] should energise us to get out there and campaign for a Labor victory".

The Abbott the bogey-man campaign (which Rudd promised he would not engage in) is a centre-piece both of unions' response and of the Labor campaign. But Abbott's standing in the polls goes up, not down, in response!

The capacity of the union movement may be weaker here or there, but there has certainly been no qualitative decline in the union movement's capacities under Labor. The unemployment rate, at 5.7%, is hurtful, but nowhere near the catastrophic level of other countries harder-hit by the world economic crisis.

What the union movement lacks is the will and vision to use the capacity it does have to assert working class interests. Given the will and vision, the capacity would be increased in the course of using it. The weaknesses and gaps in capacity, which certainly exist, would get mended. But if the capacity is not used, then over time it decays, and the weaknesses and gaps become bigger.

That is a problem with the union leaderships. And it is a problem with the layer in the unions just "below" the top official leadership, too: the layer of senior lay activists. Too many people in that layer have become saturated by a culture of trade unionism as damage-limitation.

The layer needs to be refreshed, and the best people in it reinspired, by a new generation of young trade-union activists. That is where the work needs to be done to create the basis for a socialist policy as a positive alternative that workers have a clear interest in supporting in future federal elections, a policy which is an effective rallying call, and not just opposition to the conservative parties, or a registration of protest.


This article for Socialist Alternative by Louise O'Shea surveys the many minor parties contesting the Senate elections and gives a sense of the rising clamour on Australia's far right.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.