November 27, 2011
"The public has had a gutful of what currently passes for much of our national political debate" ... Kevin Rudd.
KEVIN RUDD has called for sweeping reform of the Labor Party to prevent it becoming a ''marginalised third party'' in a move that attempts to hijack Prime Minister Julia Gillard's own agenda for change.
''There is a real danger that we simply fade away as other progressive parties around the world have done, becoming a shadow of their former selves against the aggressive conservative onslaught of a resurgent right,'' Mr Rudd said at the launch of a book written by a former Labor staffer in Brisbane yesterday.
He warned: ''We are fools if we do not understand that the public has had a gutful of what currently passes for much of our national political debate.''
A spokeswoman for Ms Gillard declined to comment on the speech, saying the Prime Minister had made a point of not commenting on anyone's offerings before next weekend's national conference.
But senior Labor sources said Mr Rudd's ideas were entirely his own and he had not drawn from a post election review of the party conducted by the elder statesmen John Faulkner, Steve Bracks and Bob Carr.
The Foreign Affairs Minister called for wide-ranging reform of party structures, including the direct election of all delegates to the national conference and the executive body, a more radical suggestion than Ms Gillard's reform agenda.
Ms Gillard has said she wants a trial of US-style primaries to preselect candidates in some seats, the introduction of online membership recruiting to meet a target of 8000 new members next year and the system of three rotating national presidents replaced with one three-year president. The changes are designed to stop Labor members from becoming frustrated and drifting towards the Greens and activist groups such as GetUp.
Mr Rudd noted that his core concern ''is how to reform our party so that it has a future, not just as a diminished political rump, not a marginalised third party of Australian politics given the opportunism of the Greens, but as the force of progressive politics for our nation''.
The conference will debate other contentious policies including a conscience vote on gay marriage, overturning a ban on selling uranium to India and asylum seekers.
Mr Rudd said the Labor Party's values had been ''lost in the mud of factional intrigue'' and called for the national conference to be ''a genuine public contest of ideas''.
He later asked his followers on the social media site Twitter for their suggestions on how to re-energise the party. If Labor could not reform itself then ''it cannot reform the nation'', Mr Rudd said.
He wants the national conference to be held every year - instead of every three years - so the party is more regularly updated.
Labor MP reactions to Mr Rudd's speech ranged from anger to amusement. ''We all know why Kevin does anything,'' one said. Another MP wryly noted that Mr Rudd was not known for being consultative during his prime ministership.
In the speech, Mr Rudd also took a swipe at the government's efforts to communicate its achievements, saying the public ''is tired of spin''.
''We must be a party that is honest, truthful, straightforward - warts and all.''
He criticised the former Keating government minister Graham Richardson, who has been critical of the government, saying Mr Richardson was an inappropriate role model for people interested in politics.
''I was troubled recently to hear that the latest Young Labor national conference had former senator Graham Richardson as a guest presenter,'' Mr Rudd said.
''To hold Senator Richardson up as a moral exemplar for the next generation of our party and our movement is just wrong. The author of 'Whatever it takes' - good grief.''
