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July 4, 2006
In a paper entitled 'The social democratic agenda: Is it viable?' published on the Evatt Foundation Mark Buttigieg explores the way federal ALP can return to government in the near future. He does so by considering the dictum that when economic times are good it is governments which loose elections not oppositions that win them, and conversely, the only times Labor has gained government post-World War Two has been against the back-drop of severe conservative government incompetence, long periods in opposition, and economic decline (1972) and severe recession (1983).
Buttigieg says that this phenomenon is becoming even more intractable because, as recessions become less severe and fewer and further between, most Australians feel even less compelled to vote Labor based on economic security issues:
As countries like Australia become more and more developed and less exposed to economic insecurity, the disposable income of their citizenry increases which creates options. Put simply, extra money buys one of two things - extra "material well being" via purchases of holidays, cars, eating out, movies, sporting events, housing renovations, etc, or it can buy extra time, which in turn allows other more socially enlightening pursuits. Unfortunately, the last 30 years has seen Australia choose the former. People have not used their newfound wealth and income to pursue self-improvement via education and culture. Instead, the majority of citizens have taken the American option. They have not elected to become part of a well informed citizenry who have the analytical tools to make informed decisions on who governs them, unlike, for example, many citizens in countries in Europe.
Hence the ALP faces a conundrum: continuing economic security and a conservative government have combined to reduce the likelihood that people from lower socio-economic groups will swing to the ALP because of economic insecurity. In essence these people are saying, "why vote Labor if I can get my economic needs met and my socially conservative views satisfied". That is the ALP's traditional base and it has gone over the Coalition. I do not see the Howard Government getting old, tired and lacking in energy and ideas.
Its a good account of the difficulties the ALP finds iself in. Buttigieg then asks the right question at this point: apart from waiting until the next protracted recession, and in the interim chanting mantra's about what "good economic managers we can be", what is the ALP to do? He says that the approach needs to be two-pronged in order to address the short-term and long-term nature of the political problem.
Buttigieg says:
For the short-term the party needs to implement structural reform of itself, which will enable it to harness a mass movement around the industrial relations debate in order to allow us to be elected in 2007. For the long-term we need to direct our education policy towards creating a society of thinking voters. If done correctly, these two measures have the potential to turn things around for Labor in a permanent way.
That is a big ask, even though the potential is there. It is one made bigger by Buttigieg's suggestion of how this can be done---shifting the Australian people to a more progressive position:
We need to address the shift away from our electoral reliance on economic security, by changing the way people think about politics and society.If we are unable to do this, the conservatives will retain a long-term natural advantage over us via the inherent social conservatism of the electorate. In the current state of the nation, the more and more economically secure people become, the less likely they are to vote ALP in the future because of our liberal attitude to social issues. The answer is not for us to sell our political souls and move further to the right - the answer is to shift the Australian people to a more progressive position.
Buttigieg is very optimistic, given the way that the current Beazely-ALP is moving to the Right and so away from a progressive position; and that it finds easier to say no than to come up with new policies. He says that the IR legislation provides an opportunity for the ALP to both swing the traditional base back whilst the tertiary educated class is coming over to Labor giving a short-term electoral recipe for success.
But I'm not sure that the tertiary educated class is coming over to Labor from the Greens. What I see is a slow drift to the Right by the Beazley-led ALP. This is a very different ALP to the Whitlam-ALP which was able to shift the Australian people to a more progressive position.The global war on terror makes it far more difficult.
Where is the aspirational class in all of this? Don't some of them need to come on board? Or is the Latham-strategy a non-starter these days. Buttigieg's account does presuppose that the Howard Government might overreach itself with its workplace reforms: ie., to go beyond what is electorally palatable either to satisfy an ideological imperative or to reward hard-core supporters. We don't know the answer to that at this stage. There are suggestions that it might. Is a Howard overreach enough for the ALP?
Buttigieg adds that Labor cannot sit back and wait for this recipe to make itself into a victory:
The party must make it happen by reforming the party structures internally to increase democratic ownership by the members, and even more importantly by opening the party up to grass-roots involvement by rank and file union members.
Well, its nice idea, a receipe. I cannot see any substantive reform of the party structures happening.
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