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An open letter to my fellow ALP members about the deeply
misguided
Senate preference manoeuvres in the 2004 federal election campaign.
A cry from the heart and an expression of bitter anger
By Bob Gould
As it happens, in March this year I notched up my 50th year of ALP
membership. I joined the Labor Party in 1954 as a youth of 17, in the
middle of the battle with the Groupers.
In all my 50 years of ALP membership and activity I've never seen
anything quite as dishonourable and stupid as the decision of the party
managers in several states to preference the essentially right-wing
group, Family First.
A question of process arises. Who in the hell makes those kinds of
decisions? They should be made by the federal executive of the ALP, but
clearly the wheeling and dealing was delegated to individuals, mainly
from the right, and indeed from the most backward sections of the
right, in each state.
The process of making such decisions is clearly deeply flawed. One
issue is the dishonourable nature of the decision. The Greens have
every right to be bitterly angry and disillusioned with the ALP and its
managers.
On the face of it the Greens had a preference deal with the ALP, which
was announced with great fanfare, and it appeared to involve an
ultimate preference exchange between the Greens and Labor before
right-wing parties.
The parliamentary leader, Mark Latham, ought to be very angry, because
on the face of it he has been roped into a dishonourable tearing up of
an agreement, to which he was very publicly party — the agreement with
the Greens.
After the event of the deal with the Greens, whoever made the
arrangements in the ALP to quietly preference Family First before the
Greens engaged in an act of political bastardry of the highest order.
The consequences of this decision will be disastrous. The Greens, a
formation likely to be around for a very long time, and growing
steadily to occupy all of the electoral space to the left of the ALP
have little reason to trust anything ALP preference negotiators say to
them ever again.
The Greens, in fact, kept their part of the bargain and behaved
honourably. On the basis of Labor's Tasmanian forest policy, the Greens
ended up giving all their preferences to the ALP in all marginal seats
and an ultimate preference to Labor before the conservatives in the
Senate. For instance, Greens preferences will elect the ALP's Michael
Foreshaw to the sixth Senate position in NSW.
The argument put forward by the shadowy ALP preference negotiators, who
made the ultimate decision, that they could not anticipate the
electoral consequences, does not stand up at all.
In a proportional representation vote, like the Senate, with the quota
being about 14.3 per cent, the last position to be elected is always
unpredictable, depending on the votes for small parties and the parts
of quotas left by Labor and the Coalition after they have elected their
first two senators.
(I'm acutely aware of the vagaries for the last position in a
proportional representation ballot for six positions. In 1971, in a
much-commented-on ballot for six federal conference delegates from the
ALP in NSW to the vital federal conference before Whitlam was elected,
I won the last position by one vote over half a quota – the narrowest
margin possible. One vote over half a quota is all that's needed for
the last position, which is a sound reason for never treating
preferences in such a situation as bloody-mindedly and as casually as
the ALP managers did on this occasion.)
If Labor preferences right-wing parties, the possibility always exists
that the vote can build up to elect a right-wing candidate, in this
instance Family First.
The basic principle should be that there are no enemies on the left,
and preferences should go first to other groups on the left and then
centre formations such as the Democrats.
For the many thousands of Labor Party members, including me, who worked
hard on election day to elect Labor, that kind of preference approach
is a principle, in addition to which it's the only practical thing to
do if you want to beat the conservatives in the Senate.
With six to be elected, even if the Labor and Green vote drops there
should be no difficulty in Labor and the Greens finishing three-all
with the Coalition and other conservatives.
The electoral stupidity of the people who made the preference
arrangements in the Senate for the ALP is demonstrated by the result of
these manoeuvres, which has been to hand control of the Senate to
Howard and Family First.
The outrageous thing about this handing over of the Senate to the
Liberals and Family First is that it wasn't necessary. A simple
ultimate preference exchange with the Greens would have got a three-all
result between the two sides of politics and led to a deadlocked Senate.
The second aspect of it is the completely artificial way that it builds
a neanderthal, fundamentalist, right-wing Protestant party into a major
force very quickly.
Thankfully, the ongoing demographic reality in Australia is that
notional Protestant religious allegiance, which is at the core of the
conservative side of Australian politics, is steadily declining.
Notional Protestants are only about 30 per cent of the population, when
they were 70 per cent 40 years ago.
The number of Australians who either say they have no religious
beliefs, or don't state a religious belief in the census, has gone up
from nearly nothing to about 30 per cent, the number of Catholics is
stable at about 30 per cent and Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and
Eastern Orthodox combined have gone up to 10 per cent.
There is certain revival of Protestant fundamentalism in outer suburban
areas of the big cities, but it's a narrowly middle-class phenomenon,
and very right-wing politically. It takes its inspiration from the
reactionary association of fundamentalist Protestant religion and
right-wing politics in the United States.
Mainly because of the ongoing demographic realities, Australian
politics hasn't, until this election, taken the US shape in this
respect. Fred Nile has been battling to bring fundamentalist Protestant
religion into politics for 25 years, with minimal success.
Suddenly, the Family First preference deal has enabled these religious
fundamentalists to leap from 1.2 and 2 per cent real votes to
artificial quotas of 14 per cent, partly with the aid of Labor and
Democrat preferences.
As a secular, leftist, agnostic Australian of Irish Catholic cultural
background, I find this sudden move to strengthen US-style Protestant
fundamentalism in Australian politics deeply offensive.
As many observers have commented, Mark Latham and the Labor Party
conducted a very vigorous and effective, and objectively rather
leftist, election campaign (compared with the past 25 years), but the
economic conjuncture was not favourable, the conservative propaganda
was effective, and we lost the election.
It was a serious loss, but the basic Labor-Green vote of 47.5 per cent
(preferred) is intact. The electoral shift was among the 5 per cent in
the middle of Australian society who tend to shift from left to right
and back again.
By far the worst feature of this election result is the blind surrender
of control of the Senate to the Liberals and Family First. Despite all
the current sweetness and light, the Coalition government will use all
its increased influence and power in the Senate to attack the trade
union movement.
The trade union movement should crucify, politically speaking, the
shadowy Labor Party managers who made the preference deal. These people
have ensured that the trade unions will have to fight for their
interests from a very defensive set of circumstances, with the Liberals
in control of the Senate.
PS. While we're at it, we should never forget that Labor preferences
unfortunately helped to elect the conservative Democrat, the leader of
the right wing in the Democrats, over the Greens in WA, three years
ago. Labor members and supporters, and Greens members and supporters,
throughout the country should raise hell to ensure that the kind of
dishonourable bastardry involved in the ALP preferencing Family First
over the Greens never happens again.
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