We need to talk about Labor (and the Greens)

Why a coalition between the two parties might the be only hope for the Left

ON Saturday night, as the results of the Labor Party conference vote to allow boat turn backs was still sinking in, I unwittingly triggered a social media cat fight that tells you much about the fraught state of progressive politics in Australia.

Like many other progressive voters, I had watched aghast as the national conference in Melbourne rejected a platform amendment to ban forcible turn backs, and I soon joined the fray on both Twitter and Facebook.

On Twitter, I showed my support for the brave Labor souls who had spoken out against turn backs during the debate: Andrew Giles, Michele O’Neil and Linda Scott.

But I also couldn’t help adding a “Shame, Labor, Shame” tweet as well.

As Saturday afternoon became Saturday night, I noticed a lot of other people I like or follow on social media — many of them Labor members and activists — were expressing similar sentiments.

But a second thread also began emerging, from clearly bitter and disappointed Labor members who chose to vent their frustration on social media at — not the Right of their own party — but the Greens.

Finally, at about 10pm and with a couple of strong drinks in me, I posted on Facebook:

Hey folks, I’m just your average progressive voter — who admits to swinging both ways (Labor and Greens) — but it does make me laugh when I hear people rail against “upper-middle class, privileged” third parties because all the profiles I’ve read of Richard Di Natale tell me his family background and upbringing was anything but that.

Maybe they’re referring to the Nationals.

That is all.

A little bit provocative, perhaps, but pretty mild really.

And then all hell broke loose. For the next two hours, a couple of people in the union movement who I respect hurled insults and abuse at each other about who was more “pure” — Labor or the Greens.

And that, in its essence, encapsulated so much of what is wrong with this vicious splintering of the progressive vote between Labor and the Greens.

My original point, clumsily made, was that (a) you don’t win people over by insulting them; and (b) rather than trying to scratch each other’s eyes out in a fight for the same turf, those who profess to support either Labor or the Greens would be far better spending their energy and resources on fighting the real enemy: the conservative side of politics.

But that point had got lost in translation, and what transpired instead simply reinforced my original point, pushing me to the point of despair.

Labor can be better than this

Now not everything that came out of the ALP conference was bad.

The commitments to renewable energy, to marriage equality, a Buffett tax, and indeed, to doubling our annual refugee intake are far-sighted and deserving of applause.

That these serious policy debates took place in the open, streamed live on the internet and reported ad naseum in the media, is a great credit to the ALP, as none of the other major parties have anything like the same transparency.

But all of this was overshadowed by one vote on boat turnbacks.

In the end this was all about politics. It was not about a humane policy, not about saving lives, not about values.

It was about the ends justifying the means. It was about neutralising a political threat. It was about winning government by hook or by crook.

The reason so many people have agonised over this is that none of us want another three years of an Abbott Government, which — no exaggeration — is one of the most wantonly destructive governments this country has ever seen.

But neither do any of us want Labor to stoop so low as to adopt the worst of the worst, a policy so reprehensible in defiance of humanity and international law. A policy that — we thought — could only come from a Liberal government.

Labor is meant to be better than this, you see.

A line that should never have been crossed

Asylum seeker and refugee policy is the rubicon that Labor first crossed in 2001 when Kim Beazley backed John Howard over the Tampa, and many Labor voters who abandoned the party in disgust back then have never come back.

There is a superficial logic to the argument that Labor has to neutralise this issue to win government, and that unless you are in government you can’t make any real difference.

The argument follows that once Labor has the levers of power, it can then go about implementing a more humane policy. But first it has to get there: hence the embrace of political expediency.

But that argument doesn’t wash, because last time Labor was in power, things only got worse.

Last time Labor was in power, we had the reinstatement offshore processing and the re-opening of the detention centres on Manus and Nauru, and all manner of cruelty to “deter the people smugglers”. And finally, Kevin Rudd’s declaration that no-one who arrived by boat in Australia would ever be allowed to settle here, no matter how strong their case for refuge.

Last time Labor was in power, the pleas for a more compassionate policy ultimately fell on deaf ears.

We even had the farcical sight of Julia Gillard and the long-forgotten MHR for Lindsay in Sydney’s west (David … Bradbury?) posing for the TV cameras on a patrol boat off the coast of Darwin during the 2010 election, just to show us how tough on the people smugglers Labor really was.

The apologists for Bill Shorten and Richard Marles will try to justify this latest lurch to the right until they are blue in the face.

They will argue for it on humanitarian grounds, that it will discourage desperate asylum seekers to make that dangerous voyage across treacherous waters, and so it will save lives.

And, of course, I hope they are right.

But let’s be under no delusions that this shift to mimic the worst extremes of Tony Abbott’s “stop the boats” approach was not motivated by compassion or decency, but by pure political expediency.

The Press Gallery commentariat declared the vote on turnbacks to be a a test of his leadership which he won. But outside of the gallery, for the rest of us it was not a political contest, but a test of Labor’s commitment to its values.

And that test was well and truly lost.

But in their calculations, there is some other realpolitik the Labor machine men should have considered: that every decision like this raises legitimate questions about whether Labor has lost its moral compass and causes more people to desert the party for good.

Ever since Tampa there has been a steady and irreversible leakage of voters from Labor to the Greens, and Labor has to accept that because of asylum seekers in particular, it can no longer claim to the natural home of a sizeable rump of progressive voters.

Or to put it in tabloid terms: Labor may be able to turn back the boats, but it can’t turn back the votes.

If last weekend’s conference has taught us anything, it is that the fragile ties that have bound together disparate elements of the party are almost irrevocably frayed, and Labor’s hopes of being able to hold together that coalition that Whitlam first united are ever-receding.

Something has to give, and with the ascendancy of the Right and of poll-driven party machine men (and they are mostly men), Labor has really forfeited any right to be seen as the natural home of socially progressive voters.

As each year passes, the likelihood of Labor getting the magical 40-plus per cent of the primary vote it needs to win government on its own recedes further back.

A good 8–9% of the electorate is now locked on the Greens, with that figure rising into the 20s and 30s in some inner urban seats.

It may not happen next election or the one after, but it is inevitable that if Labor wants to still govern in this country, it is one day going to have to do so with the support of and in partnership with the Greens.

There is another way

So that’s why it’s both a little sad and a little stupid that for many people on Labor’s Left, the only outlet for their frustration and disappointment at their failure to steer the party in a more compassionate and humane direction is to lash out at the Greens.

The reaction I saw to my social media post on Saturday night encapsulated this frustration, and I did find it inexplicable that someone like the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, is labeled as a product of “upper middle-class privilege”.

Di Natale was the son of dirt poor Italian migrants, and if he is now able to speak from middle class comfort, that is only because he worked very hard and made the most of the opportunities he was given. These used to be qualities that were championed by Labor, and he is the kind of person who should be embraced by Labor.

This kind of language is only succeeding in turning a generation of voters and activists away from Labor, so people like Adam Bandt, who a generation ago would have been a scion of Labor’s Left, now feel more comfortable within the Greens than Labor.

We see the same counter-productive attitude in the way Daniel Andrews disparagingly ruled out doing any deals with the Greens during last year’s Victorian election campaign (it turned out he didn’t need to anyway, but meanwhile a group of voters were again alienated from Labor).

Or the way Labor will refuse to let its preferences flow to the Greens in federal elections. Or the way people who vote Green are routinely described as idiots or frauds.

This is treating politics like a football team: blind loyalty to the colours, and pure hatred for the opposition. It’s like two unions fighting each other over a demarcation dispute, as if it’s in breach of some arcane rule for other progressive parties to be step onto Labor’s turf, or for progressive voters to look for an alternative to a Labor Party they have despaired of.

And unfortunately some of the worst offenders are young people.

But you don’t win people over by insulting them.

And it’s so misguided when the day is fast approaching when Labor is going to need the Greens and will not be able to wantonly dismiss them so aggressively.

Political expediency rules on both sides. The Greens do not have clean hands either, and have ruthlessly exploited Labor’s vulnerability on issues like refugees and climate to build their own support. But there is no point whingeing about that. Why wouldn’t they?

Lest this be read as another cheap shot at Labor, that’s not my intention.

I am not here to bury Labor: Labor has an essential and enduring role as the champion of working people and the poor, but it is fast losing any natural right to represent the other part of the equation, the socially progressive middle class.

No papering over the flaws in its policies can prevent that.

As just another Abbott-loathing progressive voter who has flip-flopped between both parties but does not feel bound to either of them, I really just wish that both major parties of the Left would stop viewing each other as the enemy.

The real enemy is standing over there laughing, and his name is Tony Abbott.

The most practical and pragmatic thing Labor can do now is to start treating the Greens as their allies.

As the two-party system goes into terminal decline, the future for Labor is going to be as the senior partner in a coalition.

The state politics experience in Tasmania shows that Labor and the Greens can successfully govern together.

I realise that many Labor people would rather eat their own vomit than do a deal with the Greens, but when you are faced with your own mortality, it has a wonderful way of encouraging you to set aside your principles.

If the only way to overcome the Coalition is by joining together in an alternative coalition with Labor representing its working class heartland and the Greens the socially progressive middle class, then so be it.

I realise the practicalities of such an arrangement would be almost impossible to negotiate.

And it’s probably unlikely to ever happen. But Labor really should think about.