Key players suggest a Labor in crisis


Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 28/02/2012

Reporter: Tracy Bowden

After its leadership ballot, the ALP has been talking of unity but some insiders and pundits believe recent events show a party in crisis and in need of reform.


CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: While the new Labor story's all about unity and rebuilding, some insiders and pundits believe the past week's events reflect a party in profound crisis. And in urgent need of reform - without which it may be headed for electoral oblivion. Tracy Bowden talked to some players to try to unravel what's wrong with Labor.

JOHN FAULKNER, ALP SENATOR (December 2011): The situation is now dire. Delegates, our party is in decline. Our membership is small, and getting smaller. Members and supporters told us that they lost their faith, and they believe that the party has lost its way.

TRACY BOWDEN, REPORTER: He couldn't have made it any clearer. As the ALP National Conference last December, elder statesman John Faulkner issued a warning to the party faithful.

JOHN FAULKNER (December 2011): Our popular support at all levels has plumbed new depths. Depths not seen before in Labor's darkest days.

TRACY BOWDEN: But there were more dark days to come. Within less than three months, days of public bloodletting and name-calling. Of Labor attacking itself. Culminating yesterday in another leadership ballot.


TRACY BOWDEN: What did you feel as you watched that unfold?

BOB CARR, FORMER NSW PREMIER: I just wanted to look the other way while it was going on. A lot of us did. A lot of us found it extremely depressing. But I mean, this is a grand old political party that's done great things for the Australian people. It faces the challenge of a hung Parliament, it faces the challenge of the social democratic party in an age of globalisation - the social change that goes with globalisation.

TRACY BOWDEN: Former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr says the problems at the heart of the Labor Party are far more complex than a row over the leadership.

BOB CARR: I think we've got to see beyond that, and make some corrections in what I would call the culture or the ethos of the Labor Party.

RODNEY CAVALIER, LABOR PARTY HISTORIAN: The great splits and schisms of the past have been arguments about principle. Great principles. The role of Australia in the empire. Party loyalty. Communism, religion. The difficulties of the last few days have been based on pure personal hatred.

TRACY BOWDEN: Former New South Wales minister and Labor historian Rod Cavalier believes the party is in deep trouble.

RODNEY CAVALIER: Got to understand that for most of Australia the Labor Party is stone cold dead. There is no Labor Party in the great landmass of Australia. In most country towns, in the suburbs of our cities, there's either no branch - there's no formal branch, there is no formal meeting - and where there is, the branches are on life support; most of them would not pass a breath on the mirror test.

TRACY BOWDEN: The latest polls show that if an election were held today, on a two-party-preferred basis, the Coalition would win by 54 per cent to Labor's 46 per cent. This would be a four per cent swing away from Labor, and a loss of 15 seats for the ALP.

CHERYL KERNOT, FORMER FEDERAL MP: I think Rodney Cavalier nailed it a while ago when he said the party's been hollowed out, and it's just being used by careerists as a vehicle to get personal power. I think the party needs to try much harder to be embracing of participatory processes at the grass roots level, and not make members feel like they're just fodder for handing out how-to-vote cards.

TRACY BOWDEN: Bob Carr says the decline of Labor in Australia reflects a worldwide trend.

BOB CARR: Parties of the democratic left, parties of the centre left, have seen their support devoured by green parties on the left and populist right wing parties on the right - anti-immigrant parties in Europe, for example. It creates a climate that's pretty tough.

HUGH MACKAY, SOCIAL RESEARCHER: There's absolutely nothing wrong with the Labor Party that isn't wrong with political parties in the modern era. The whole political process is being increasingly corrupted by the techniques of modern commercial marketing. So, in the same way as politicians are inevitably going to attract less and less public esteem, the more they are marketed like brands - so, as part of the same phenomenon, there's going to be more and more volatility in the electorate, as there is in the commercial marketplace.

NICK ECONOMOU, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, MONASH UNIVERSITY: It is not uncommon for, on those rare occasions that we have Federal Labor Governments, for there to be serious leadership rivalries. Whitlam had Cairns, Hawke had Keating, and it looks like Gillard will have Rudd pestering here for the duration.

TRACY BOWDEN: Political scientist Nick Economou says the Labor Party's problems are not unique.

NICK ECONOMOU: Both major political parties are experiencing the same hollowing-out process. It's just a reality of modern times. Why would young people want to join political parties, especially when they seem to stand for basically the same sort of things?

TRACY BOWDEN: In 2010, a review conducted by John Faulkner, Steve Bracks and Bob Carr made a series of recommendations to change the role and influence of the membership. But only some of the report was made public.

RODNEY CAVALIER: It can only be turned around by democratising the party; breaking the powers of the unions - not some saccharine thing like reducing them reducing them from 50 to 40, like it was from 60 to 50, but reducing them below the position they can influence the party's control. That's around eight to 10 per cent.

TRACY BOWDEN: So as it tries to recover from this latest, very public stoush, and pledges to unite and move on, what shape is the Australian Labor Party in long term? Well, that depends on who you ask.

NICK ECONOMOU: I think that Labor's on-track for an electoral defeat, and if the past is any guide, that will be the beginning of quite a long period of opposition for Labor.

BOB CARR: I'm more hopeful than I am pessimistic. I think this grand old party, the Australian Labor Party, has still got life and a future in it, but it means a more nimble-footed leadership than we've seen in the past.

RODNEY CAVALIER: The most recent stoush to me is just an obvious continuum of the decay that I witnessed. I'm in a position where if I started weeping about all that's wrong, I'd never stop crying.