February 28, 2006
Km Beazley, the leader of the federal ALP, on democracy in the ALP, on Virginia Trioli's ABC morning programme:
"What I'm going to do is defend the party's processes, defend the democratic rights of our grassroots members... I am going to give the ordinary party members the right make up their own minds. There will be proper democratic ballots throughout this party."
Is that so? Isn't the reality one in which the ALP right supports rank and file democracy when it threatens those critics on the left but oppose the rights of grassroots members when they threaten the right? Isn't the reality one in which the NSW machine is working to phase out rank and file ballots? How does thatt deliver the much needed development of an innovative policy?
Here's Martin Ferguson, a Labor frontbencher, and former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). He writes in todays Australian newspaper about the lack of democracy inside the ALP:
Only 19 Labor members elected in 1996 remain in parliament today and they, together with their more recently elected caucus colleagues, are too focused - by necessity - on internal party dynamics that have a lot to do with factional dominance and little to do with a Labor view of how to make Australia a better place.The result is that after a decade in Opposition we have plenty of storytellers but not much of a story to tell. This will not be remedied by rubbing out sitting MPs in safe Labor seats in favour of party hacks with factional numbers on public office selection panels or through branch stacks.They will bring nothing to the caucus except a further choke on the free development of an innovative policy agenda and a further weakening of the elected caucus in favour of the centralisation of power to a few trade union and party officials in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Ferguson is confirming the points Mark Latham made in the Latham Diaries.
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