Remember Kevin 07
I used to have an ALP corflute sign hiding in my cupboard featuring a young smiling Kevin Rudd, the Kevin 07 that delivered a thumping majority to the ALP and ending little Johnny's reign. I mention that because it was the last time I voted for the ALP after 30 odd years and today as I sit here in the smoky shade of 2019, it seems vaguely relevant to the political shitfuckery we are witnessing.
Just to recap, the ALP was returned to government with an 18 seat majority having secured a swing of over 5% in the popular vote. Realistically it should have meant an centre left government for at least 3 terms but instead the ALP barely scraped back into office 3 years later, just getting a minority government over the line. And since then we have endured more right wing bastardry from Abbott, Turnbull and now Morrison.
Now that the dust has settled on the debacle of May 2019 I am struck by a recurring theme both here and abroad. It might be a Murdoch inspired talking point but even the ALP post election analysis highlighted "an unpopular leader" as one of three reasons it didn't win as expected and of course just recently we here that Corbyn was equally unelectable. In both cases policy wasn't the problem despite the claim by some that the so-called franking credits and death tax scare cost the ALP seats.
But I'm not going to rehash that bit of history except to say this to the ardent ALP supporters who have recently turned into Green haters. You had a massive majority in 2007 and you squandered it and popular support by your stupid internecine warfare. When the voting public turfed you out, you turned to architect of some of that for leadership and then you wondered why the voters didn't flock to your cause. And in the process your self indulgent obsession with power simply for the sake of it (or so it seems) has driven many ALP supporters into the arms of the Greens.
The ALP is rightly shitting itself over the Greens. They are stealing their voters, especially in the inner city enclaves of SE Oz or at least that how the ALP portrays it. Stealing, as though the voting loyalty of the public was something the ALP was entitled to simply because it's the so-called workers party. Last time I looked the so-called workers party is full of professionals with degrees and a bunch of folk whose only experience with hard work is when a delegation from the nurses union turns up at their door but hey whatever.
The problem for the ALP is their core supporter base, unionised labor, is slowly dissolving and with it the capacity for articulating a coherent social democratic agenda. While the dissolution of organised labor is bringing with it a fracturing of the socialist cause, the fact remains that ideas of social democracy still resonate with many. More equality rather than less is still preferred by the majority of voters, it's just that voters are less sure that the ALP will deliver, especially when, over the successive decades it has been a willing accomplice to the neoliberal experiment it now seeks to discredit.
The other more serious problem for the ALP follows. Whereas it was relatively straightforward to harness a large cohort of unionist voters and marry that to a rainbow collective, the decline in unionism means more work must be done on maintaining the rainbow of diverse interests that complement the "base". The outer suburbs are no longer dominated by unionised workers and the inner city enclaves are turning green. Joel Fitzgibbon's coal fetish and the recent QLD tour by Albo are signs of how desperate the ALP is to hang onto the declining base of its supporters, however these actions are unlikely to convince the so-called "woke" green voters because it simple underlines the basic dilemma for the ALP.
Not only is the decline in organised labor a problem for votes for the ALP, it is also a problem for the centrality of a political agenda that appeals to greater egalitarianism. In isolation that shouldn't be an insurmountable problem, after all the right has adapted its messaging to appeal to a splintered demographic whilst remaining relatively true to itself. However the emergence of the climate as a dominant issue has caused the ALP and the left with greater problems than the right. And the increasing concern of voters with the environment is not going away and as it grows so too do the problems for the ALP.
Of course the ALP could bite the bullet and fashion a Green New Deal, one that keeps faith with their social and economically progressive ideals but that seems to be bridge too far, one that involves too many concessions to the environmental cause and one that appears to concede ground to a party outside of their own. Instead they retreat to pretending to be different on the way the economy is run and who it is supposed to benefit while ignoring the elephant in the room, the looming catastrophe awaiting the next generations who will have to deal with the legacy of the boomers material success.
Not only does the ALP appear to downplay the magnitude of the challenge global warming poses, they also seem to ignore the lived experience of the young "woke" latte sippers who have university degrees and yet find their best job prospects are casual shifts in a variety of impermanent employment environments. For these people, and those without degrees or who aren't white caucasian, and statistically they are a significant percentage of voters, the ALP seems to be talking to a different era, one where jobs were for life and the world wasn't threatening with disastrous warming.
The Greens appeal isn't limited to concerns about climate change although arguably that is central to the debate. They also speak to the more idealistic voters on issues around immigration and the steadily rising surveillance state, once again issues that once were the obsession of the left of the ALP. The steady drift from left to the centre and now veering to the right by the ALP has surrendered the ideological high ground to the Greens and the ALP are poorly placed to take it back.
The old joke in terms of the two party system is when you break it down, it becomes a choice between tweedledee and tweedledum and that no matter who you vote for you get screwed. But that's a surrender to despair and cynicism, instead I prefer to vote for hope and the only party that offers real hope of substantial change is the Greens. I think a lot of people agree.
Just to recap, the ALP was returned to government with an 18 seat majority having secured a swing of over 5% in the popular vote. Realistically it should have meant an centre left government for at least 3 terms but instead the ALP barely scraped back into office 3 years later, just getting a minority government over the line. And since then we have endured more right wing bastardry from Abbott, Turnbull and now Morrison.
Now that the dust has settled on the debacle of May 2019 I am struck by a recurring theme both here and abroad. It might be a Murdoch inspired talking point but even the ALP post election analysis highlighted "an unpopular leader" as one of three reasons it didn't win as expected and of course just recently we here that Corbyn was equally unelectable. In both cases policy wasn't the problem despite the claim by some that the so-called franking credits and death tax scare cost the ALP seats.
But I'm not going to rehash that bit of history except to say this to the ardent ALP supporters who have recently turned into Green haters. You had a massive majority in 2007 and you squandered it and popular support by your stupid internecine warfare. When the voting public turfed you out, you turned to architect of some of that for leadership and then you wondered why the voters didn't flock to your cause. And in the process your self indulgent obsession with power simply for the sake of it (or so it seems) has driven many ALP supporters into the arms of the Greens.
The ALP is rightly shitting itself over the Greens. They are stealing their voters, especially in the inner city enclaves of SE Oz or at least that how the ALP portrays it. Stealing, as though the voting loyalty of the public was something the ALP was entitled to simply because it's the so-called workers party. Last time I looked the so-called workers party is full of professionals with degrees and a bunch of folk whose only experience with hard work is when a delegation from the nurses union turns up at their door but hey whatever.
The problem for the ALP is their core supporter base, unionised labor, is slowly dissolving and with it the capacity for articulating a coherent social democratic agenda. While the dissolution of organised labor is bringing with it a fracturing of the socialist cause, the fact remains that ideas of social democracy still resonate with many. More equality rather than less is still preferred by the majority of voters, it's just that voters are less sure that the ALP will deliver, especially when, over the successive decades it has been a willing accomplice to the neoliberal experiment it now seeks to discredit.
The other more serious problem for the ALP follows. Whereas it was relatively straightforward to harness a large cohort of unionist voters and marry that to a rainbow collective, the decline in unionism means more work must be done on maintaining the rainbow of diverse interests that complement the "base". The outer suburbs are no longer dominated by unionised workers and the inner city enclaves are turning green. Joel Fitzgibbon's coal fetish and the recent QLD tour by Albo are signs of how desperate the ALP is to hang onto the declining base of its supporters, however these actions are unlikely to convince the so-called "woke" green voters because it simple underlines the basic dilemma for the ALP.
Not only is the decline in organised labor a problem for votes for the ALP, it is also a problem for the centrality of a political agenda that appeals to greater egalitarianism. In isolation that shouldn't be an insurmountable problem, after all the right has adapted its messaging to appeal to a splintered demographic whilst remaining relatively true to itself. However the emergence of the climate as a dominant issue has caused the ALP and the left with greater problems than the right. And the increasing concern of voters with the environment is not going away and as it grows so too do the problems for the ALP.
Of course the ALP could bite the bullet and fashion a Green New Deal, one that keeps faith with their social and economically progressive ideals but that seems to be bridge too far, one that involves too many concessions to the environmental cause and one that appears to concede ground to a party outside of their own. Instead they retreat to pretending to be different on the way the economy is run and who it is supposed to benefit while ignoring the elephant in the room, the looming catastrophe awaiting the next generations who will have to deal with the legacy of the boomers material success.
Not only does the ALP appear to downplay the magnitude of the challenge global warming poses, they also seem to ignore the lived experience of the young "woke" latte sippers who have university degrees and yet find their best job prospects are casual shifts in a variety of impermanent employment environments. For these people, and those without degrees or who aren't white caucasian, and statistically they are a significant percentage of voters, the ALP seems to be talking to a different era, one where jobs were for life and the world wasn't threatening with disastrous warming.
The Greens appeal isn't limited to concerns about climate change although arguably that is central to the debate. They also speak to the more idealistic voters on issues around immigration and the steadily rising surveillance state, once again issues that once were the obsession of the left of the ALP. The steady drift from left to the centre and now veering to the right by the ALP has surrendered the ideological high ground to the Greens and the ALP are poorly placed to take it back.
The old joke in terms of the two party system is when you break it down, it becomes a choice between tweedledee and tweedledum and that no matter who you vote for you get screwed. But that's a surrender to despair and cynicism, instead I prefer to vote for hope and the only party that offers real hope of substantial change is the Greens. I think a lot of people agree.
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