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Julia Gillard positions herself as ideological leader
of a new right wing in the Labor Party
Her organisational proposals should be vigorously resisted
throughout the labour movement
By Bob Gould
Last night (March 7) a friend and I attended Gerard Henderson’s
conservative Sydney Institute to hear Julia Gillard speak. I must admit
that for a while I have been in two minds about Julia Gillard as a
potential Labor leader. I’ve only encountered her in person on one
other occasion, when she came to address ALP members in South Sydney,
defending her reactionary policy on the refugee question.
At that meeting, the whole 30 or so speakers from the floor attacked
her refugee policy, and I led the attack, ending my short speech by
adapting the words of the Roman Senator Cato who ended every speech in
the Roman Senate “and Carthage must be destroyed” with my version, that
everyone making a speech in the ALP should end with the peroration that
“mandatory detention must be destroyed”. That suggestion was taken up
by quite a few other speakers.
Talking about that event with others afterwards, I found that many
shared my view that despite sharply opposing her policy we were kind of
impressed by her vigorous and upfront demeanour in the face of a very
hostile meeting. Since that time, I have sensed that a lot Labor
leftists, particularly women, shared my grudging respect for her in her
vigorous public demeanour, and in particular the way she confronts
head-on the viciousness of the mass media, which always have a subtext
of slight hostility to her because she is an unmarried, childless woman
who doesn’t conform to the bourgeouis cliches peddled by official
society about home and family.
It was in that mood of willing to be persuaded by her that I went along
to hear her at Henderson’s right-wing think-tank. Her speech was a
salutary lesson to me against any kind of romantic naivete or
temptation to take my eyes off the core content of her political
position.
Julia Gillard’s address to the lower ranks of the big end of town, who
attend such lectures, was a brilliant tour de force in its way. It got
considerable television coverage. Gillard is clearly conscious that she
has an audience across the spectrum from the right to the left, and
even to people like me, who up to last night were ambiguous about her.
Her speech was billed as being about Labor in the future. She
paid a little bit of lip service to policy matters in a rather general
right-wing way. She made a big play to conventional "wisdom" about
family values by saying that the sexual revolution of the 1960s and
1970s had gone too far. A bit of a gesture towards Howard’s white
picket fence!
Then the real nitty gritty emerged. She made a sweeping and constant
and lengthy attack on the existence of the right and left factions in
the Labor Party and her final punchline was a dramatic proposition that
Labor should drop the long-standing parliamentary caucus practice of
electing the ministry and the shadow ministry, a practice that has
distinguished the Labor Party from the conservative parties (in which
the parliamentary leader selects the Cabinet) for 100 years. She
po-facedly presented the proposition that the ALP should adopt the
Liberal system as some kind of reform, and in fact the key reform
required in the ALP.
Under questioning she was a bit more cautious. When I pointedly asked
whether her Bonapartist proposal included the abolition of proportional
representation in ALP ballots and a reversal to the ultra-centralist
winner-take-all arrangements of the distant past, Henderson (who chairs
everything and comments on everything) and Gillard tried to make a joke
of my reference to Bonapartism, but Gillard backed off and said she
didn’t propose abolishing proportional representation, and Labor could
have proportional representation without factions.
When another
questioner, probably a reactionary, asked her about union
influence in the ALP, she said that she didn’t oppose union influence,
and that the 50:50 union/branch arrangement should be preserved in the
Labor Party.
What is Julia Gillard up to, and what is her factional ally
Martin Ferguson up to?
Gillard, and her ally Martin Ferguson are in fact being extremely
cynical when they attack factionalism in the ALP. Both of them got
where they are by shrewd exploitation of the factional system. For
months now, Martin Ferguson has been beating the drum for a range
of conservative proposals on policy matters that would shift Labor
dramatically to the right. Now his close associate Gillard comes
forward, despite what she says to the contrary, positioning
herself as a major contender for ALP parliamentary leadership.
She is
clearly angling for media support for her
leadership project. In angling for the media’s support she is clearly
attempting to position herself as a Blair-like, New
Labor figure. The core of this implicit appeal by Gillard to the media
and the establishment is her reactionary proposal,
opposed to the democratic Labor tradition, to give the Labor
parliamentary leadership (she’s clearly thinking of herself
here) the same Bonapartist powers that traditionally accrue to
conservative leaderships.
Gillard’s proposals are
obviously linked to a right-wing policy shift advocated
by Martin Ferguson on the left and Bill Shorten on the right. It’s not
accidental that Gillard’s speech to the Sydney Institute
shares space on the op-ed page of The
Australian, the News Limited
broadsheet, with another conservative ALP figure with origins in the
left, Rod Cavalier, who lets fly with another diatribe against the
influence of unions in the ALP.
When Julia Gillard was defending the reactionary Labor shadow cabinet
position on refugees, her position was challenged very effectively by
a very healthy cross-factional movement, Labor for Refugees. These
new proposals on ALP policy and structure, which are clearly linked by
such people as Julia Gillard, Martin Ferguson, Bill Shorten and Rod
Cavalier, should be opposed by strenuous cross-factional
agitation from Labor’s rank and file. The natural human affections and
prejudices that people in labour movement politics inevitably develop
towards particular individuals they like or dislike must take second
place to the vital political and organisational issues that are
in dispute.
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