By Joan Coxsedge
On March 6, I announced I would not be recontesting my seat of Melbourne West, which I have held for almost 12 years. While being in parliament gave me resources and some political clout, the institution is pompous and patriarchal and has become a place of wordy irrelevance.
I joined the ALP 24 years ago. At that time we believed we could change the world. A heady mixture of hope and anger, which combined social, environmental and feminist concerns with more revolutionary thinking, found expression in a broadly based antiwar movement.
The mass party most in tune with my aims was the ALP, especially in Victoria, which had a strong social commitment. With all its flaws, the election of the Whitlam government in 1972 was like a shower of rain after a severe drought, when essential reforms delayed by 23 years of anti-labour rule were implemented.
All the more shocking was the ousting of the government in an overseas-manipulated constitutional coup three years later. It showed that even a mildly reformist government would not be tolerated by our real power brokers. Nevertheless, perhaps naively, when I was preselected two years later, I still believed it possible for Labor governments to make positive changes.
The 1982 ALP conference in Canberra was another traumatic event for ALP members, when the party's previous anti-uranium policy was thrown out and replaced with a pro-mining position.
As teller, I saw unprecedented scenes of delegates weeping as the vote was carried. This decision set the stage for subsequent national conferences, now tightly controlled PR events held in a Hobart casino. It was also a warning of what we could expect from the Labor hierarchy.
Deregulation
From day one in government, Hawke/Keating and Co turned their back on ALP policy and put their energy into playing footsies with the "big end of town", implementing a right-wing agenda that no Liberal government could have got away with.
Financial deregulation and its soul mate, privatisation — the very antithesis of Labor philosophy — were the most profound economic change ever inflicted on this country and have been disastrous for ordinary people wherever they have been tried.
It was obvious that this had everything to do with favouring the largest crop of shonky financial wheeler-dealers that Australia is ever likely to see, as well as being a bonanza for overseas speculators. It led to the spectacular rise and crash of the Bonds, d the loss of integrity of some of Australia's most respected institutions. The twin fetish of deregulation and privatisation formed the basis for most other government decisions since then, even though Australia has one of the smallest public sectors in the Western world.
As a direct consequence, Australia has become one of the least egalitarian countries in the West. The top 20% receive nearly half of the gross income of all families and the bottom 20% a mere 4.6%. And while the government puts the screws on social security recipients, we are being robbed blind through legal tax dodges which allow large businesses to pay between zero and 12% company tax.
Deliberate high interest rates have decimated Australia's manufacturing base, with capital being funnelled off to get-rich-quick land and speculation schemes. Governments are currently flogging off our assets in one of the biggest fire sales in history, along with our natural resources.
In the "newspeak" language so beloved of the generals during the Gulf War, Hawke's "resource security" means that huge chunks of what remains of our once magnificent forests are to be chopped down for the profit of huge companies such as Harris-Daishowa, renowned for its rapacity in destroying rainforest in other Third World countries. Meanwhile, local and more environmentally sensitive millers, who employ the majority of timber workers, are being squeezed out.
Industry statement
Hawke's latest statement regarding tariff cuts, even more business tax breaks and the "freeing up" of our resources, was a cynical PR exercise.
To understand that statement, go no further than the Uruguay Round of GATT talks. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade came into being in 1948 on the initiative of the United States, in conjunction with the IMF and the World Bank, to control world trade — 90% of which is now dominated by its 98 member countries. New GATT proposals, clearly at the back of Hawke's latest pronouncement, would turn the entire world into a vast "free trade zone" where people and the environment would be ruthlessly subordinated to the interests of a handful of transnational corporations.
It would mean even more destruction of our secondary industries and the ripping out of our resources, all further steps to our recolonisation. Part and parcel of this is the downgrading of the power of the labour movement and its independence.
These issues should be widely aired in the media and vigorously debated. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen because, due to deliberate federal government policies, more than 70% of our print media — the worst ownership in the Western world — is in the hands of a foreigner, who personally controls the right-wing direction of his empire.
Members marginalised
These nightmarish policies, completely alien to the ALP philosophy and tradition, have had a catastrophic effect on party membership. The last straw for many was Hawke's enthusiastic support for the Gulf War and his drive to build Australia into a major arms supplier.
Bob Hogg's plan to "democratise" the ALP is a furphy because, instead of re-establishing rank and file supremacy, it will legitimate the present stranglehold of the Federal Executive. The policy-making functions of ALP forums are now largely ineffective, and members have become so cynical and disillusioned about the hijacking of their party by the right-wing machine that large numbers of our best activists are walking away.
We are witnessing the North Americanisation of our political system into a one-party government with two similar branches which take turns getting elected. People like me are being marginalised out of mainstream party politics.
One hundred years ago, a wave of maritime and shearer strikes gave rise to the Australian Labor Party so workers would have a voice in the running of their country. The founders of the ALP would turn in their graves if they could see what has happened to their dream.
It may be that the future for radical political activists lies in issue-oriented movements rather than in the tweedledum-tweedledee parliaments.