Australian Labor Party

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Moskvax (talk | contribs) at 10:11, 8 October 2006 (→‎History: it's implied by the latter part of this sentence that when the formal name was adopted, they used the Australian spelling, "labour"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"ALP" redirects here. For other uses, see ALP (disambiguation).
Australian Labor Party
LeaderKim Beazley
Founded1891
HeadquartersCentenary House
19 National Circuit
BARTON ACT 2600
IdeologySocial democracy
International affiliationSocialist International
Website
Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is Australia's oldest political party. It is a social democratic party which is formally linked to the trade union movement. At the national level Labor has been in opposition since 1996, after having been in government from 1983 to 1996. At the state and territory level, since 2002 Labor has been in government in all six states and both mainland territories - the first time Labor has achieved this. The party's current federal parliamentary leader is Kim Beazley, and its National President for 2006 is Warren Mundine.

While it is standard practice in Australian English to spell the word labour with an "-our" ending, the ALP uses the "-or" ending.

Policy

The policy of the Australian Labor Party is contained its National Platform, which is approved by delegates to Labor's National Conference, held every three years. The current National Platform was adopted by the 43rd National Conference in January 2004. According to the Labor Party's website, "The Platform is the result of a rigorous and constructive process of consultation, spanning the nation and including the cooperation and input of state and territory policy committees, local branches, unions, state and territory governments, and individual Party members. The Platform provides the policy foundation from which we can continue to work towards the election of a federal Labor Government." [1]

In practice, the Platform provides only general policy guidelines to Labor's federal, state and territory parliamentary leaderships. The policy Labor takes into an election campaign is determined by the Cabinet (if the party is in office) or the Shadow Cabinet (if it is in opposition), in consultation with key interest groups within the party, and is contained in the parliamentary Leader's policy speech delivered during the election campaign. When Labor is in office, the policies it implements are determined by the Cabinet, and sometimes bear little resemblance to official party policy, or even to what was in the policy speech at the previous election. The Hawke government, for example, privatised the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Qantas airlines in direct contravention of party policy.

The Labor Party is commonly described as a social democratic party (or sometimes as a democratic socialist party), but in fact it has no formal ideology. The party was created by, and has always been essentially controlled by, trade unionists, and its policy at any given time has been the policy of the broader labour movement. Thus at the first federal election 1901 Labor's platform called for a White Australia, a citizen army and compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes. [2] Labor has at various times supported high tariffs and low tariffs, conscription and pacifism, White Australia and multiculturalism, nationalisation and privatisation, isolationism and internationalism.

Although Labor has never been a socialist party, it has always had a minority of convinced socialists in its ranks. In the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution, support for socialism grew in trade union ranks, and at the 1921 All-Australian Trades Union Congress a resolution was passed calling for "the socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange." As a result, Labor's Federal Conference in 1922 adopted a similiarly worded "socialist objective," which remained official policy for many years. The resolution was immediately qualified, however, by the "Blackburn amendment," which said that "socialisation" was desirable only when was necessary to "eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features." [3] In practice the socialist objective was a dead letter. Only once has a federal Labor government attempted to nationalise any industry (Ben Chifley's bank nationalisation of 1947), and that was held by the High Court to be unconstitutional.

The current National Platform gives a general indication of the policy direction which a future Labor government would follow, but does not commit the party to specific policies. It maintains that "Labor's traditional values will remain a constant on which all Australians can rely." While making it clear that Labor is fully committed to a market economy, it says that: "Labor believes in a strong role for national government — the one institution all Australians truly own and control through our right to vote." Labor "will not allow the benefits of change to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, or located only in privileged communities. The benefits must be shared by all Australians and all our regions."

Although in office from 1983 to 1996 Labor pursued many policies associated with neo-liberalism, such as privatisation, tariff reductions and deregulation of the financial system, since 1996 Labor has reacted to the Howard government's policies by moving back to more traditional Labor policies, with an emphasis on "fairness" in outcomes in the economy, education system, health system and industrial relations system. Labor, the Platform says, "believes that all people are created equal in their entitlement to dignity and respect, and should have an equal chance to achieve their potential." For Labor, "government has a critical role in ensuring fairness by: ensuring equal opportunity; removing unjustifiable discrimination; and achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth, income and status."

Further sections of the Platform stress Labor's support for "Compassion and Equality," "Human Rights," "Labour Rights" and "Democracy." These are values which all mainstream political parties nominally subscribe to, but in practice Labor's interpretation of them is substantially different to that of the Liberal Party, which under John Howard has fully embraced the neo-liberal agenda. Since 2004 Labor has laid particular stress on resisting Howard's deregulation of the labour market and restrictions on the rights of trade unions. Labor has pledged that a promise to reverse the Howard Government's industrial relations laws will be the centrepiece of its policy at the 2007 federal election.

Structure

The Australian Labor Party is a democratic and federal party, which consists of both individual members and affiliated trade unions, who between them decide the party's policies, elect its governing bodies and choose its candidates for public office. The great majority of trade unions in Australia are affiliated to the party, and their affiliation fees, based on the size of their memberships, makes up a large part of the party's income. The party consists of six state and two territory branches, each of which consists of local branches which any Australian citizen or permanent resident can join, plus affiliated trade unions. Individual members pay a membership fee, which is graduated according to income. Members are expected to attend at least one meeting of their local branch each year. In practice only a dedicated minority regularly attend meetings. Many members only become active during election campaigns. The party has about 50,000 individual members, although this figure tends to fluctuate along with the party's electoral fortunes. The average age of the membership is over 60. [1]

Hon Kim Beazley, Leader of the Australian Labor Party 1996-2001 and since 2005

The members and unions elect delegates to state and territory conferences (usually held annually, although more frequent conferences are often held). These conferences decide policy, and elect state or territory executives, a state or territory president (an honorary position usually held for a one-year term), and a state or territory secretary (a full-time professional position). The larger branches also have full-time assistant secretaries and organisers. In the past the ratio of conference delegates coming from the branches and affiliated unions has varied from state to state, however under recent national reforms at least 50% of delegates at all state and territory conferences must be elected by branches.

The party holds a National Conference every three years, which consists of delegates representing the state and territory branches (many coming from affiliated trade unions, although there is no formal requirement for unions to be represented at the National Conference). The National Conference approves the party's Platform and policies, elects the National Executive, and appoints office-bearers such as the National Secretary, who also serves as national campaign director during elections. The current National Secretary is Tim Gartrell. The next National Conference will be held in January 2007.

The national Leader of the Labor Party is elected by the Labor members of the national Parliament (the Caucus), not by the conference. Until recently the national conference elected the party's National President, a largely honorary position, but since 2003 the position has rotated among people directly elected by the party's individual members. The current National President is Warren Mundine, who assumed the past in January 2006. The two Vice-Presidents are Barry Jones, a veteran party figure who was a minister in the Hawke government, and Dr Carmen Lawrence, a former Premier of Western Australia and minister in the Keating government.

The Labor Party contests national, state and territory elections. In some states it also contests local government elections: in others it does not, preferring to allow its members to run as non-endorsed candidates. The process of choosing Labor candidates is called pre-selection. Candidates are pre-selected by different methods in the various states and territories. In some they are chosen by ballots of all party members, in others by panels or committees elected by the state conference, in still others by a combination of these two. Labor candidates are required to sign a pledge that if elected they will always vote in Parliament in accordance with decisions made by a vote of the Caucus. They are also sometimes required to donate a portion of their salary to the party, although this practice has declined with the introduction of public funding for political parties.

The Labor Party has always had a left wing and a right wing, but since the 1970s it has been organised into formal factions, to which many party members belong and often pay an additional membership fee. The two largest factions are Labor Unity (on the right) and the National Left. Labor Unity generally supports free-market policies and the U.S. Alliance. The National Left, although it seldom openly espouses socialism, favours more state intervention in the economy and is generally opposed to the U.S. Alliance. The factions are themselves divided into sub-factions, and there is a constantly changing pattern of factional and sub-factional alliances around particular policy issues or around particular pre-selection disputes. Frequently these alliances and disputes reflect power struggles between or within trade unions.

The trade unions are also factionally aligned. The largest unions supporting the right are the Australian Workers Union (AWU), the National Union of Workers (NUW) and the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (SDA). Important unions supporting the left include the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU), the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), the Australian Services Union (ASU) and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). But these affiliations are seldom unconditional or permanent. The AWU and the NUW, for example, are bitter rivals and the NUW sometimes aligns itself with the left to further its conflict with the AWU. On some issues, such as opposition to the Howard government's industrial relations policy, all the unions are in agreement and work as a block within the party.

Pre-selections are usually conducted along factional lines, although sometimes a non-factional candidate will be given preferential treatment (this happened with Cheryl Kernot in 1998 and again with Peter Garrett in 2004). Deals between the factions to divide up the safe seats between them are also common. Pre-selections, particularly for safe Labor seats, are often bitterly contested, and have frequently involved practices such as branch stacking (signing up large numbers of nominal party members to vote in pre-selection ballots), personation, multiple voting and even fraudulent electoral enrolment. Trade unions were in the past accused of giving inflated membership figures to increase their influence over pre-selections, but party rules changes have stamped out this practice. Pre-selection results are frequently challenged, and the National Executive is sometimes called on to arbitrate these disputes.

History

No exact date can be given for the founding of the Australian Labor Party, originating as it did from the various colonial labour movements. Labour Leagues and similar electoral organisations existed in New South Wales and Queensland from about 1890. Party mythology says the first Labor branch was founded at a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a tree (the "Tree of Knowledge") in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party also claims to be the oldest in Australia. The party as a serious electoral force dates from 1891 in New South Wales, 1893 in Queensland, and later in the other colonies. In 1899, Anderson Dawson formed a minority Labour government in Queensland, the first in the world, which lasted one week.

After Federation, the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party (informally known as the Caucus) first met on the 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first Federal Parliament. This is now taken as the founding date of the federal Labor Party, but it was some years before there was any significant structure or organisation at a national level. (The formal name Australian Labour Party was adopted in 1908, with the American spelling of "Labor" adopted from 1912.)

The ALP during its early years was distinguished by its rapid growth and success at a national level, first forming a minority national government under Chris Watson in April 1904, and forming its first majority government under Andrew Fisher in 1910. The state branches were also successful, except in Victoria, where the strength of Deakinite liberalism inhibited the party's growth. The first majority Labor state governments were formed in New South Wales and South Australia in 1910, in Western Australia in 1911 and in Queensland in 1915. Such success eluded equivalent social democratic and labour parties in other countries for many years.

One of the party's early innovations was the establishment of a federal arbitration system for the resolution of industrial disputes, which formed the basis of the industrial relations system for many decades.

The party was historically committed to socialist economic policies, but this term was never clearly defined, and no Labor government ever attempted to implement "socialism" in any serious sense. Labor supported national wage fixing and a strong welfare system, it did not nationalise private enterprise. The single exception to this was Ben Chifley's attempt to nationalise the private banks in the 1940s, but this was ruled unconstitutional by the High Court of Australia. The commitment to nationalisation was dropped by Gough Whitlam.

In the 1970s and beyond, the party, through the efforts of Gough Whitlam and his supporters within the party, gave up its theoretical commitment to socialism and became a social democratic party. (Some references to democratic socialism still remain in the party's constitution, but they are generally regarded as a relic). Indeed, during the 1980s the party was responsible for the introduction of many economic policies such as privatisation of government enterprises (such as the Commonwealth Bank, which was itself established by an earlier Labor government), and deregulation of many previously tightly-controlled industries, which are normally the province of conservative governments.

From its formation until the 1950s Labor and its affiliated unions were the strongest defenders of the White Australia Policy, which banned all non-European migration to Australia. This policy was partly motivated by 19th-century theories about "racial purity" (shared by most Australians at this time), and partly by fears of economic competition from low-wage labour. In practice the party opposed all migration, on the grounds that immigrants competed with Australian workers and drove down wages, until after World War II, when the Chifley government launched a major immigration program. The party's opposition to non-European immigration did not change until after the retirement of Arthur Calwell as leader in 1967. Subsequently Labor has become an advocate of multiculturalism, although some of its trade union base continue to oppose high immigration levels.

The Labor Party has suffered three major splits:

  • In 1915 over the issue of conscription, when Prime Minister Billy Hughes supported the introduction of conscription, while the majority of the party opposed it. After failing to persuade the Australian voters to support a referendum approving of conscription which bitterly divided the country in the process, Hughes and his followers were expelled from the Labor Party. He formed the Nationalist Party of Australia in alliance with the conservatives and remained Prime Minister until 1923.
  • In 1931 over economic issues revolving around how best to handle the Great Depression. The ALP was split between those who believed in radical policies such as NSW Premier Jack Lang, who wanted to repudiate Australia's debt to British bondholders, proto-Keynesians such as federal Treasurer Ted Theodore, and believers in orthodox finance such as Prime Minister James Scullin and a senior minister in his government, Joseph Lyons. In 1931 Lyons left the party and joined the conservatives, forming the United Australia Party as successors to the Nationalists and becoming Prime Minister in 1932.
  • The 1954 split on communism. During the 1950s the issue of communism and support for communist causes or governments caused great internal conflict in the Labor party and the trade union movement in general. During the 1950's, staunchly anti-Communist Roman Catholic members (Catholics being an important traditional support base) became suspicious of Communist infiltration of unions and formed Industrial Groups to gain control of them, fostering intense internal conflict. After Labor's loss of the 1954 election, federal leader Dr H.V. Evatt blamed subversive activities of the "Groupers" for the defeat. They were expelled from the ALP and formed the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) whose intellectual leader was B.A. Santamaria. The DLP was heavily influenced by Catholic social teachings and had the support of the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix. The DLP helped the Liberal Party of Australia remain in power for almost two decades but was successfully undermined by the Whitlam Labor Government during the 1970s and ceased to exist as a parliamentary party after the 1974 election.

The Labor Party served as a development ground for several conservative leaders. Conservative Prime Ministers Joseph Cook, Billy Hughes and Joseph Lyons were all ex-members of the Labor Party, with both Hughes and Lyons holding very senior positions in the party (Prime Minister and Premier respectively). Non-Labor premiers such as William Holman also began their careers in the Labor Party.

Through its membership of the Socialist International, the ALP is affiliated with other democratic socialist, social democratic and labour parties in many countries.

ALP federal leaders

List of ALP federal leaders by time served

Current ALP State Premiers / Territory Chief Ministers

Past ALP State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers

. New South Wales

Victoria

Queensland

Western Australia

South Australia

Tasmania

Australian Capital Territory

  • Rosemary Follett (1989, 1991–95, first female head of an Australian state or territory)

Other past Labor politicians

For current ALP federal politicians, see:

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ Australian Labor Party website
  2. ^ Brian McKinlay, The ALP: A Short History of the Australian Labor Party, Drummond 1981, 19
  3. ^ McKinlay, 53
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Australian_Labor_Party&oldid=80185599"