By Bob Gould

The Queensland Labor Party conference was held over the long weekend
in Cairns in the far north. Labor Party state conferences are made up
of 50 per cent branch delegates and 50 per cent from affiliated trade
unions.

The Queensland conference was dominated by the threat from the Liberal
federal government of draconian anti-union legislation when the
Liberals get a majority of one in the Senate after July 1.

The conference unanimously opposed all aspects of the Liberal
legislation, as did Queensland Premier Peter Beattie and federal
opposition leader Kim Beazley.

All reasonable forms of mobilisation against the Liberals' anti-union
laws were endorsed by the Queensland conference.

Premier Beattie committed himself to a High Court legal challenge to
the anti-union legislation in conjunction with the other states and
territories, which all have Labor governments.

There is some chance of this legal action succeeding, as transfers of
industrial powers from the states to the Commonwealth have twice been
defeated in federal referendums. It's difficult to see how the
Commonwealth can take control of industrial law from the states
without a further referendum.

On the question of asylum seekers and refugees, the Queensland
conference unanimously carried two resolutions supporting refugees.
One of these demanded that Labor in the federal parliament support the
private members' bills of the Liberal dissidents to abolish mandatory
detention of asylum seekers.

NEW SOUTH WALES CONFERENCE

The two-day NSW Labor conference took place in the grand old Sydney
Town Hall, which has been the venue of ALP state conferences since 1954.

The first Labor conference I attended was in 1954, amid the increasing
tension building up to the Labor split between left and right in 1955.

I've attended every NSW Labor conference since then, about 40
conferences, deducting election years, when a conference isn't held.

In the late 1950s, the conference grew to about 1150 delegates, but
after federal intervention in the NSW branch in 1971, and the
introduction of proportional representation, the number of delegates
was capped at 824, and is now, like Queensland, 50 per cent from local
branches and 50 per cent from affiliated unions.

Allowing for two alternates for each delegate, 200-330 Labor
politicians and their staffers, and ordinary Labor Party members
observing from the gallery, about 3000-4000 people pass through a NSW
Labor conference.

From the 1950s to the early 1980s, with different factional struggles
and splits, the conferences were often turbulent, even fierce, events.
Since the mid-1980s they've been a bit quieter.

Since the early 1970s, I've run a substantial labour movement bookshop
in the right-hand corner of the foyer opposite the registration desk,
and I pay a percentage of the sales to the Labor Party. This is always
a useful thing to do. I put out a list of new labour movement books on
the delegates' seats, and the bookshop is a handy place to meet and
talk to delegates and observers, many of whom I've known for many years.

It's possible to follow the debates in the conference from the
television screen in the foyer, and most delegates go in and out from
the conference through the foyer.

New labour movement literature sold very well this year, and at my
most exotic I even sold three copies of John Percy's "History of the
DSP" and three copies of Barry Sheppard's history of the US SWP, but
most of the books I sold were on more traditional labour movement topics.

This was a fairly businesslike, quietish, sort of conference. The
delegates divided roughly 65 per cent for the broad right faction
(Centre Unity) and 35 per cent for the Socialist Left (the official left).

The dominating issue at the conference was the impending anti-union
laws of the federal Liberal government.

Federal Labor opposition leader Kim Beazley committed to total
opposition to the laws, and committed the federal Labor Party to
dismantling these laws if elected to government.

NSW Premier Bob Carr, who had appeared in the media to weaken a bit in
his opposition to the transfer of industrial powers to the
Commonwealth, came out extremely strongly against the transfer of
powers and in opposition to all the anti-union laws, responding to
pressure from the unions. The NSW conference also endorsed all
reasonable forms of mobilisation against the laws.

As is usual at NSW ALP conference, the lengthy discussion of the
industrial report was the centrepiece. Many union pushed through
important motions in support of their industrial demands, exerting
pressure on the state government.

A notable feature of this conference was great union discontent with
public-private partnerships in infrastructure development and broad
union opposition to outsourcing of service delivery in a number of areas.

Motions were carried condemning outsourcing and directed at making the
state government cease the practice, and a motion was carried
unanimously to call for a public inquiry into public-private partnerships.

On the refugee issue, some right-wingers on the international
relations committee, in combination with left-wing shadow immigration
minister Laurie Ferguson, had forced through a resolution to be
presented to conference weakening the pro-refugee position adopted
overwhelmingly at the last NSW Labor conference.

Labor for Refugees campaigned vigorously against this resolution
throughout the conference and John Robertson, the secretary of Unions
NSW, who holds strong principles on a number of questions, indicated
to all concerned that if the resolution to weaken the policy reached
the floor of conference he would move an amendment to return to the
more pro-refugee position adopted by the last conference.

In the face of Robertson's intransigence on this question, the other
side caved in, and in typical ALP style the offending resolution was
pushed down the agenda so it wasn't put to the conference, and the
more progressive existing position prevailed.

In his low-key but commanding way, Robertson was a dominating figure
at this conference. He stiffened up the unions to exert maximum
pressure on Carr and the state government to oppose the federal
anti-union legislation, he was the architect of the criticism of
public-private partnerships and outsourcing, and his intervention on
refugees was decisive.

It's worth noting that on these three major questions at the
conference a broadly leftist sentiment was almost unanimous and was
cross-factional between Centre Unity, the Socialist Left and
independent leftists such as myself.

Taken as a whole, it was a relatively low-key conference compared with
some, but the determination and unity of purpose against the federal
government's attempts to smash the trade unions may well unleash in
Australian society the slumbering forces of the labour movement, which
we haven't seen for some time.

PS. As far as I could see, there was no one from Green Left Weekly
reporting the conference, which is an act of sectarianism that I find
difficult to comprehend.