The ALP may have won the May election with an extraordinarily low primary vote of just 33 percent, but the Albanese government has since firmly put its stamp on national politics. It is polling well, enjoying a substantial lead over the Coalition, and Anthony Albanese dominates opposition leader Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister. Simply not being the Morrison government has been a large part of this success.
The capitalists are happy enough with this outcome. Many had lost patience with Morrison and were unconcerned by the prospect of a Labor government led by Albanese. Nine years of Coalition rule had yielded fewer and fewer benefits for the bosses as time wore on. By the election, few capitalists were prepared to throw their support solidly behind it.
The Albanese government has done nothing that might cause the capitalists to have second thoughts. It has maintained many of the Coalition’s policies, including backing tax cuts for the rich, promoting the fossil fuels industry and doing nothing to alleviate the impact of inflation on workers’ wages. It is supporting the US to the hilt and increasing military spending. It is killing off the few remaining protective pandemic measures with fatal consequences—August being the deadliest month so far.
Along with maintaining much of the Coalition agenda, Labor has also sought to address capitalist concerns about flagging productivity and labour shortages. The recent Jobs Summit was devoted almost entirely to fixing these problems. The government is considering ways to increase immigration to fill vacancies everywhere, from manufacturing and construction to hospitality and agriculture. Other supportable reforms, like opening up free TAFE spots or making child care more affordable, are likewise being pursued on behalf of the bosses, to overcome labour and skills shortages rather than to ensure greater social equality. The government has nothing but gruel for those on the dole or disability pensions. Little wonder most bosses’ organisations were happy to endorse the Jobs Summit, leaving Dutton to grumble impotently on the sidelines.
The Albanese government has steered away from most of the Coalition's war on “woke”, but is doing enough to keep conservatives happy. It is continuing the Coalition’s obsequious support for the monarchy, its persecution of refugees and its pursuit of a so-called “religious discrimination” bill that will enshrine the right to discriminate against LGBTI people.
For those who voted Labor in the hope of ending the Coalition’s right-wing agenda, there is little on offer other than empty gestures: things like legislating for the 43 percent cut to carbon emissions while at the same time giving the green light to dozens of new coal and gas projects; or the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, primarily an exercise in symbolism. All this has kept the big media bosses happy enough—the Albanese government has enjoyed kid-glove treatment from all but Sky News.
Nor is the Albanese government threatened by opposition from the ranks of the ALP or trade union leaders. In the federal caucus, the left and right are in furious agreement. Albanese hails from the left faction, but each faction has its people in cabinet. That is the chief concern of the factions today, not the interests of the working class. That much is evident from every Labor conference in recent decades, where the left and right stitch up rotten deals ahead of time, and ideological contestation is entirely absent.
The government likewise faces little opposition from state governments. Labor premiers run most states, but as a testimony to Albanese’s conservatism, his warmest relationship seems to be with New South Wales Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet.
And no-one in the party leadership appears to be particularly worried by the steady decline in Labor’s primary vote. The lesson the party took from the 2019 election was that putting up a mildly redistributive program cost Labor the election. The party swung to the right in the aftermath, and the votes and seats it lost to the Greens at this year’s election were compensated for by Greens’ preferences going back to Labor and Greens’ support for Labor on the floor of parliament. The damage done to the Liberal vote by the teal independents certainly helped Labor too.
So there is little pressure on Labor to tack left in such a situation to try to recoup some of the votes it loses to the Greens. Since Labor politicians have no higher ambition than forming a government and none in carrying out a progressive reform agenda, that is all that is required. Much better to rely on the readily given support from Greens MPs than to shift to the left, risking the wrath of the Murdoch and Nine media. The loss of some inner-city seats to the Greens is a small price to pay.
Disgracefully, many groups that championed refugee rights, LGBTI rights or action on climate change have gone quiet since the Albanese government took power. Where they haven’t gone into hibernation, they have lost interest in protesting in favour of lobbying ministers behind closed doors. Cushy positions in the political bureaucracy are the reward for some. The same is true of those running the student unions, most of whom are Labor Party members whose main goal in life is a career in politics.
The trade union bureaucracy has also given the Albanese government a free ride. For years the union leaders have preferred to focus on electioneering for the ALP rather than organising strikes and demonstrations. Class collaboration has been their default response. They have done nothing to fight the dramatic cuts to real wages as inflation cuts into living standards. In Labor-run states such as Victoria and Queensland, the union leaders have been happy to sign off on enterprise agreements that cut real wages. Only in NSW have the union leaders been prepared to fight, but that is mainly due to their desire to bring down the Perrottet government at the election next March; it’s quite likely they will go to water if Labor wins.
The passivity of the unions stands in contrast to the situation in Britain, where some unions have struck for higher wages in the face of runaway inflation. Mick Lynch, leader of the rail, maritime and transport union, has become a folk hero to millions because he seems to be a voice for those suffering under the Tory government. Leaders like Lynch cannot be trusted to lead the struggle needed to reverse decades of working-class retreat in Britain, but they at least have raised their heads above the parapet. ACTU secretary Sally McManus and her ilk are far more likely to be seen taking tea and biscuits with the bosses.
The foot-dragging by Australia’s union leaders is particularly inexcusable because the potential clearly exists for a union fight back. There have been several recent examples of workers pushing back against their union leaders trying to impose wage cuts during enterprise bargaining negotiations. Nearly half the membership of the Victorian teachers’ union, for example, voted against a wage-cutting agreement when it was put to the ballot. In NSW, rank-and-file nurses and midwives voted to increase their pay claim, despite objections from their union officials.
The problem is that no organisation is willing to channel this kind of resistance on a mass scale. The situation in Australia is not directly comparable to Britain, where there is more raw class anger and a more acute economic crisis. But it’s not as if millions of workers here are comfortably off: there is increasing concern about the cost of living. But the potential for struggle in Australia is severely limited by the influence of the ALP and the long-term role the party and its supporters have played in containing and quashing resistance.
The ALP is well equipped to do this because of its trade union backing. The union leaders, parliamentarians and party apparatus control the party. The union leaders dominate the factions, hold influence over preselections and play a big role on the floor of party conferences. Most of the time, the union leaders leave the parliamentarians alone to undertake the business of government, but at times they have intervened to discipline the parliamentarians.
In the distant past, this union link caused the ruling class to be wary of the ALP since, in a very diffuse way, it gives the working class some sway over Labor’s politics. The Liberals, by contrast, have traditionally been the capitalists’ first choice because the party is subject to no such working-class pressure.
Ruling class hostility to Labor has receded significantly in recent decades because Labor governments have repeatedly demonstrated their loyalty to the capitalists. And, at times, Labor has used the union link to discipline the working class, enforcing wage cuts and containing union militancy, as it did during the Hawke and Keating governments when the ACTU signed a no-strike agreement with the ALP (the Prices and Incomes Accord). The ruling class appreciate this aspect of Labor rule, because using more openly pro-boss Liberal governments to try to discipline workers creates more risk of blow-ups and resistance.
The Labor left has not always been in bed with the right. During World War I and in conjunction with the unions, it waged a successful battle to stop the Labor government from introducing military conscription. This battle mobilised thousands of working-class militants and led to the expulsion of the Labor prime minister and two state premiers. During the Great Depression, the Labor left in New South Wales organised Socialisation Units to pressure the Labor government to implement socialism within three years. Within six months, the units had brought together thousands of radicals fighting to turn society upside down. During the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, Labor’s Jim Cairns was at the forefront of mass demonstrations against conscription and for the demand to pull Australian troops out of the conflict. From the 1920s to the 1970s, communist currents in the trade unions also created left pressure on the ALP (although, at times, they were a drag to the right).
There is no evidence of any such pressures today, and the Greens—which don’t even try to build in the trade unions—exert very little pressure on Labor. Nor are the Greens interested in doing so: unlike earlier generations of leftists in and around the ALP, they have no commitment to socialism or mobilising workers and students for struggle.
How and when things will shift is uncertain. Much will depend on circumstances outside the left’s control. Perhaps it will be the onset of deep economic crisis or mass unemployment demonstrating the bankruptcy of capitalism to millions, or the outbreak of large-scale imperialist war. Perhaps it will be a badly judged government decision that stirs Australian politics from its current malaise and provokes resistance on the left inside the ALP and trade unions.
The catalyst may not even come from the left, although that would be welcome. Some of the most serious disputes over the last two decades have been led by traditionally right-wing unions such as the National Union of Workers (NUW). The right can be more willing to move because they are not worried about being pilloried as militant troublemakers like the left can be. Back in the 1970s, the NUW’s predecessor, the Storemen and Packers’ Union and its right-wing factional ally, the Transport Workers Union, led a string of significant strikes that broke the Fraser government’s attempt to cut wages.
By contrast, unions with a left or militant reputation, the best example today being the construction division of the CFMEU, have used their historic reputation to strike bad deals with the bosses. The same was true with the parliamentary leadership. It was the NSW Premier Jack Lang, a stalwart of the party right, who led resistance to the Scullin Labor government’s austerity program during the depression. Bill Shorten, backed by the right-wing Australian Workers Union, fought for a social democratic election platform in 2019, while Anthony “I Fight Tories” Albanese has pulled the party to the right. Political breaks might come from quite unexpected sources.
At some point, workers may just become so fed up that they take action independently of formal organisation or their union apparatus, and in so doing prompt others to act.
However things develop, we need to build a socialist current that is prepared to fight and that can inspire others to do so too. This is a challenging task, but necessary and increasingly urgent.
