Labor woes

[Gandalf The White]

Meanwhile ... Albo will be a no-show.




Anthony Albanese to dodge union ALP conference walkout

EWIN HANNAN
WORKPLACE EDITOR

JOHN FERGUSON
ASSOCIATE EDITOR


12:00AM NOVEMBER 15, 2019


Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese. Picture: AAP



Anthony Albanese will not ­attend the Victorian ALP state conference this weekend, avoiding a planned mass walkout by Left unions furious at federal Labor’s position on free trade.

In a further move reflecting internal party tensions, the ­Opposition Leader’s deputy, Richard Marles, a Victorian frontbencher, has ­declined an ­invitation to step in for his leader and make a keynote conference speech on ­behalf of the federal parliamentary party on Sunday.

The threatened walkout by a raft of Victorian Left unions primarily over free trade also reflects their opposition to Mr Albanese’s campaign to have state CFMEU leader John Setka expelled from the ALP.

National union leaders remain angry at the ALP caucus for backing three free-trade deals, accusing the party of abandoning its platform by siding with the government on the ­Indo­nesian, Hong Kong and Peru agreements.

The display of party disunity comes as Mr Albanese tries to rebuild Labor after the devastating election loss in May. Victoria, the home state of former leader Bill Shorten, remains a relative Labor stronghold but Mr Albanese’s stand against Mr Setka has generated opposition among state Left-wing unions.

The pushback from Mr Setka’s supporters will not be welcomed by federal Labor and the ACTU, which are trying to convince the Senate crossbench not to support the union-busting Ensuring Integrity Bill.

The government, which has delayed a vote on the bill, is citing the conduct of Mr Setka and the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union to justify the proposed new laws to make it easier to deregister ­unions and ban union officials.

In a report tabled in the ­Senate on Thursday, Mr Setka was cleared by the privileges committee for being in contempt of parliament over alleged threats to senators.

The committee, which investigated Mr Setka after he said crossbench senators would “wear the consequences” if they voted for the Ensuring Integrity Bill, said while they found the conduct “extremely distasteful”, it did not warrant further action.


John Setka. Picture: Morgan Sette

The committee, which investigated Mr Setka after he said crossbench senators would “wear the consequences” if they voted for the Ensuring Integrity Bill, said while they found the conduct “extremely distasteful”, it did not warrant further action.

Sources said the decision by Mr Albanese and Mr Marles not to address the conference had led to “panicked” discussions among state party officials about who would be the keynote speaker on Sunday, which is generally reserved for debate on federal ­policy and politics.

Mr Albanese said on Thursday his decision not to attend the conference had been made months ago but Labor sources and union officials said they believed it was driven by the planned walkout, a source of speculation for weeks. “All the Left unions were planning to walk as soon as he got up to speak,” a Labor source said. “He was going to be looking at a very empty hall.”

Union leaders said there ­remained widespread anger about federal Labor’s decision to side with the government on the three free-trade agreements as it was seen as a blatant beach of the ALP platform. Sources said the state conference would debate at least one motion attacking the federal Labor position.

Mr Albanese has not said what he will be doing instead of attending the conference. A spokesman for the Opposition Leader said: “Mr Albanese is not attending this conference, a decision that was made several months ago. He looks forward to attending next year’s conference.”

Mr Marles said he had been invited to address the conference but had a pre-­existing commitment to be an ambassador for a charity fun run in his electorate.


Federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese (left) and his deputy Richard Marles. Picture: AAP
A Labor spokesman said late on Thursday Mr Marles “will be available (on Saturday) to present the federal Labor report”.

A spokeswoman for Mr Marles said: “He isn’t speaking. He will be there at various points. He will be there in a voting capacity.”

Another senior Labor figure said on Thursday: “Albo’s problem is he thinks he is going to get walked out on. Marles was pencilled in but I would be surprised if he turns up. They are usually lining up to talk.”

CFMEU leader ­Michael O’Connor said in October that Labor’s support for the three free-trade deals would cause ongoing “conflict” between the ALP and the union movement, and the “parliamentary party will have to wear the fallout”.

He said the caucus decision sent a “very bad signal” to unions and workers, and guaranteed there would be rank-and-file opposition at ALP state conferences and the next national conference.

ACTU president Michele O’Neil also accused the party of abandoning its platform by siding with the government on the free-trade agreements.

Premier Daniel Andrews is scheduled to address the conference on Saturday, close to a year after his election victory. Sources said he could face anger over his decision to ban nat­ive logging but no motions condemning the move were planned.

www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/anthony-albanese-to-dodge-union-alp-conference-walkout/news-story/257c972d5f4bd7bed93a0f694c519603

[Gandalf The White]

Labor’s election review reads like a disaster movie – with a few clues for the stunned survivors

Katharine Murphy Political editor
Thu 7 Nov 2019 19.19 AEDT

There is no definitive roadmap from the reviewers, but a couple of dangerous ideas are floated


Bill Shorten’s indefatigability is a practical issue for Labor leader Anthony Albanese to manage, as recent history tells us. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP



The forward sizzle about the release of Labor’s campaign review was focused on the obvious conflict point – how Bill Shorten would absorb the post-mortem. Would the review be scathing about the former leader’s lack of popularity, attributing the lion’s share of the blame for the election loss to him? Would Shorten then strike back, setting the framework for a contested term, and another election loss?

The reviewers met with Shorten privately early on Thursday, before the review went to the national executive, so the former leader was briefed ahead of the public unveiling. Shorten then responded publicly to the review before it was released, framing it on his own terms, and his own terms were clear as a bell. In the world of second chances, “were the universe to grant re-runs” the former leader would do things differently and, by the way, he’d be around for the next 20 years.

So that bit of deft media management from Shorten – I’m learning guys, and by the way I’m still here – delivered the requisite personality frisson that the busted, over-stimulated, 24/7 news cycle craves.

Still, it wasn’t just cheap spectacle. Shorten’s indefatigability is a practical issue for Anthony Albanese to manage, as recent history tells us. Former leaders who believe their best days are still in front of them are always oversized.

But consuming the review through the prism of personality, and ego, and leadership ambition, would be a mistake. Critics inside Labor on Thursday were focusing on the deficiencies of the post-mortem: the implicit elevation of popularity as a make-or-break metric (Malcolm Turnbull might have something to say about whether doing that is a good idea), and the failure to provide some serious analysis about which policies were successful and which were dogs.

These critiques doing the rounds are reasonable. But my own view is the 2019 campaign review is a substantial bit of work, which takes the challenge squarely up to Labor on a range of fronts.

The review is completely unsparing about the campaign, which reads like a disaster movie. Lurking behind the Hindenburg were organisational processes within the opposition that didn’t allow sufficient internal contestability, which leads us to some observations about culture: the reviewers note that people were not encouraged to express their doubts about whether or not Labor was really tracking to victory – doubts that clearly should have been expressed.

But the most challenging question of the post-mortem is not whether or not one campaign was a monumental stuff up, or whether Stockholm syndrome had taken hold, whether the polling was noisy, whether voters hated Shorten, whether there was a campaign committee, or whether people made up spending proposals on the back of shopping dockets during the campaign.

The central question of the review is how does Labor fuse its increasingly divided core constituencies – those constituencies being blue-collar workers and affluent metropolitan progressives?

Jay Weatherill and Craig Emerson are pretty blunt about that challenge. “Success in resolving this dilemma will first require Labor to acknowledge it exists. It will require Labor to devote the necessary time and energy as a party to address it.”

There is no definitive roadmap from the reviewers, but a couple of dangerous ideas are floated.

The first is decentralisation. Labor federally is run by a leadership group, a shadow expenditure review committee and a shadow ministry, which works on a principle of drawing civil society organisations and progressive constituencies closer to Labor, the reviewers note, in an environment where a growing list of these groups had already “banked the win” in 2019.

The inference from the reviewers is these procedures, meant to impose discipline on the animal spirits of a political party that threw away government by indulging an unhinged leadership soap opera between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, imprisoned Labor in an activist frame.


This was a political party trapped in an echo-chamber.

To solve the dilemma identified, Labor has to step outside the closed loop of Australians who are politically engaged. “Success is likely to require a campaign culture that is less centralised and encourages a greater diversity of views and more robust internal debates – to reflect the increasing diversity of Labor’s constituency from inner-city voters to those living in outer-urban, regional and country communities,” the review says.

Simple, right? Until you compare that aspiration with current reality. The party which has spent decades building up a command and control structure and centralised national decision making – with that organisational structure considered an institutional strength – now needs to think about loosening the grip. “A stronger regional presence is essential for Labor to be in touch with voter concerns and issues in Australia’s regions.”

Implicit in this review is a challenge: Labor in 2019 needs to learn how to walk all sides of the street.

There is a view doing the rounds in the right faction post-election that progressive, values-driven voters are less important than the traditional base, because they can vote Green and the preferences flow back – but the campaign review is emphatic on this point: one constituency can’t be sacrificed for another.

Fusing constituencies with different experiences, values and objectives in an age of mass intolerance is really bloody difficult, but this, in a nutshell, is the core challenge of the current term.

Weatherill and Emerson are crystal clear: if Labor can’t do this, if it fails to square this circle, it will not win the next election.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/07/labors-election-review-reads-like-a-disaster-movie-with-a-few-clues-for-the-stunned-survivors