November 30, 2011
Opinion
EDITORIAL
"Rudd's words would push Labor where it needs to go." Photo: Kate Geraghty
WHEN Kevin Rudd speaks about the present state and future prospects of the Labor Party, the messenger is also to some extent the message. That alters and qualifies everything he says. Rudd's analysis, though, is correct.
Labor's century-long evolution has included regular crises. It is at another such point now: either it embraces reform or it dies of irrelevance. If Labor wants to know what an unreformed future looks like, it can examine its moribund NSW branch - an increasingly conservative, inward-looking and timid organisation, led in Parliament without vision or idealism, and dominated by vested interests in the trade union movement and associated factions. Its overriding concern: to cling to what little power it still has. Branch members' concerns are irrelevant. The party is living proof of Robert Michels's iron law of oligarchy - that even the most democratic organisations become oligarchies over time, as the realities of power, the need for efficiency and leadership, overwhelm ideals.
Rudd proposes to re-energise the party membership by giving members the power to elect top officials and delegates to the national conference. That would undermine the oligarchs' power, which is why unions and factional players oppose it. When unionism was truly a mass movement, with half the workforce enrolled, their pre-eminence within the workers' party had a meaning. Those days are past but the party has not changed to reflect the fact and now suffocates under their institutionalised dead weight. Rudd, who is not factionally aligned - unlike the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard - recognises the need for change that goes deeper than Gillard's plan for US-style primaries to select candidates.
But Rudd is not blameless on party reform. As prime minister he did try to reduce the factions' sway but also presided over one of the most stage-managed and least outwardly democratic party conferences. If that is his idea of reform, it is pretty unimpressive. His abiding flaw as prime minister - a desire to control and micro-manage and to exclude dissent - in effect undercuts the argument he is making now for more consultation and democracy. Factions and unions, whatever their shortcomings, at least provide a counterweight to a single domineering individual, critics can argue.
The argument has weight but if all it does is preserve the status quo, it is self-defeating. Without reform, Labor will die. Rudd's past actions may suggest otherwise, and his present words may serve an unstated leadership agenda. But they would push Labor where it needs to go. The party should listen.
