A response to Alan Bradley and a further response to Peter Boyle

By Bob Gould

Elections in Australia, where voting is compulsory, and where 95 per
cent of the electorate votes, bring political issues and class
divisions into fairly sharp focus.

The DSP leadership's proposition that Labor and the Liberals are
equivalent bourgeois parties is an artificial construct and it breaks
down in the face of most elections -- very strikingly so in the run-
up to these elections.

The traditional Marxist view that the Labor Party is a bourgeois
workers' party is a quite scientific description of the Labor Party
in Australia, and it's based particularly on the substantial
involvement of most of the major trade unions in the Labor Party.

Running up to these elections, the trade unions have been able to
commit Mark Latham's ALP leadership to a fairly radical set of
industrial relations proposals, which is important because these
matters have a major bearing on the class struggle.

Just this week, for instance, I had a phone call from an old friend
in Melbourne who is a delegate of the CFMEU. As it happens, this old
acquaintance shares the Boyle-Bradley view of the ALP, but he's a
good observer and in an amused way he reported the atmosphere at the
quarterly delegates' meeting of the CFMEU, attended by 300 delegates,
at which he had just been present.

He described Martin Kingham reporting on the decision of the ALP
national conference to oppose the building industry Royal Commission
and the adoption of the progressive industrial relations policy.

Kingham went on to say the CFMEU would work even more closely with
the ALP to ensure the election of a Labor government and it would
then use its muscle to ensure that the progressive decisions of the
conference were carried out.

My old friend reported wild enthusiasm for Kingham's proposals in
this important industrial institution: the Victorian CFMEU's
quarterly delegates' meeting. I wonder if Sue Bolton will report this
delegates' meeting in next week's GLW.

I tell this story to illustrate the substantial groundswell building
up in the labour movement for the election of a Latham government.

We should also, however, take into account Luke Fomiati's salutary
note of warning, when he points to the right-wing ideas developed by
Ryan Heath in today's press. As Fomiati realistically points out,
Heath isn't any old student, but an important part of one wing of the
Labor left, and he's deliberately giving comfort to the most
conservative economic ideas coming out of Mark Latham's kitbag of
populism, right and left.

Socialists should not give Latham, and Ryan Heath for that matter,
any support for their right-wing ideas, but they are faced with the
reality that they must fight hard for a Labor government if they want
any hearing at all from the masses, and particularly the industrial
working class such as the CFMEU delegates, who deeply want to get rid
of Howard.

Like any socialist working in the ALP, and like even the DSP when it
worked in the ALP, I'll work vigorously on the booth, etc, for the
election of a Labor government and Labor candidates. That's part of
the deal if you choose to work in the ALP.

There are some moments of crisis when even people who work in the ALP
sometimes vote for other candidates. Back in the 1950s and 1960s lots
of ALP left-wingers used to quietly vote, in the secrecy of the
booth, for the Communists Jim Healy or Jack Mundey for the Senate.

In the bitter crisis of the last federal elections, in the face of
the craven policy of the ALP leadership on the refugee question, a
lot of the left-wingers I know around inner-city Sydney quietly voted
for the Greens, although they worked on the booths for the ALP.

That's not likely to be the situation in the coming elections. The
groundswell to remove Howard will draw in the bulk of the labour
movement behind the ALP. Nevertheless, all the polls indicate that
the Greens will get, for them, a large vote, partly from the collapse
of the Democrats and partly from young people for whom Labor-Liberal
class politics are not so significant.

Everything suggests the possibility of the election of a majority
Labor government, but everything also suggests the great likelihood
of the election of 5-6 Greens in the Senate, who would then, very
likely, hold the balance of power.

I would regard such an outcome as very satisfactory, and the tension
between the Greens and the ALP over policy matters would be very
healthy. Maybe my formulation about a Labor-Greens majority
government was a bit imprecise. I doubt that there will be a formal
coalition, but it's worth noting that the Greens in the ACT and the
Greens in the upper house in WA support Labor governments and oppose
the tories on all questions where the positions of the Greens and the
ALP coincide, which seems to be most of the time.

Boyle and Bradley adopt a sectarian attitude towards the deep
aspirations of the 56.5 per cent of the electorate who seem likely to
vote Labor or Green, and for the removal of Howard.

The more leftist and progressive people among that 56.5 per cent are
not indifferent, either, to the political outcome after the
elections. Many of them look to the Greens and the Labor left to, in
tandem, fight for more progressive outcomes from a Labor government.

The cranky pessimism of Boyle-Bradley about such a possibility gives
them no point of entry into the existing consciousness of the left
side of society.

Alan Bradley prattles a bit about the Greens and the Queensland
elections, but he doesn't tell us much about either the Greens or the
Queensland elections, other than generalities.

My understanding, looking at the electoral map of the results in The
Australian on the Monday, was that Labor won all the provincial
cities along the coast except Gladstone. It won all the seats in
Brisbane, and the only belt of National Party seats was the large-
estate pastoral areas in south-west Queensland. In that area, the
only Labor seat was one of the two in Toowoomba, where Bradley lives
and works.

I'd ask Alan Bradley this sociological question: what's the
difference in social composition between the two Toowoomba seats? Is
it the case that the one won by the Nationals goes out into the rural
areas and the one won by Labor is the more urban, working-class one?

If that's the case, doesn't that tell you something about the
sociology of Australian elections?

I'd also be interested if he could give us some breakdown of the
preference flow from the Greens in the Toowoomba seats. That's a
genuine question. Even if the preferences weren't distributed, Greens
scrutineers should have collected a good picture for their own future
use, and it would be interesting to know.

What I say about the coming elections is this: leftists in the ALP
should fight hard to get ALP candidates elected. They should also
fight hard for preferences to go to the Greens and the Socialist
Alliance. People active in the Greens should fight hard to get Greens
elected, and they should fight hard for preferences to the ALP and
the Socialist Alliance. Socialist Alliance members should fight hard
for their candidates and for preferences to the Greens and the ALP.
The over-riding slogan should be kick the Liberals out, which
corresponds to the need felt by the overwhelming majority of the left
side of Australian society. (In that spirit, isn't it time for GLW to
have a few four-page supplements where representatives of the left of
the ALP and the Greens are given the opportunity to put their point
of view on the coming elections, rather than being severely edited by
GLW journalists.)