The Australian Labor Party’s Fortunes and Prospects: Its Internal Reviews and Scholarly Analyses

Abstract

This thesis analysed the five internal Reviews conducted by the ALP to date – in 1964, 1979, 1996, 2002 and 2010 – to assess its prospects of winning office federally in its own right. The focus was on the internal Party debates and public commentary surrounding the Reviews’ recommendations to reform the Party’s structure, and Labor’s persistence with its current policy priorities. The former analysis included the degeneration of the Party’s factions into sub-factions and fiefdoms, the rise of a political class whose influence is pervasive in preselections and the unions’ dominance within the Party. The latter analysis concerned the Party’s encouraging women, youth and ethnic communities to support the Party, and the resultant disaffection of many among the Party’s working class supporters living in Sydney’s outer western suburbs (and like suburbs in other states and territories) who felt Labor was ignoring their concerns with unemployment, inter-generational poverty and the like, and with Labor and Coalition governments’ policies on multiculturalism, migrant intake levels and the settlements of Muslims from Middle Eastern countries in their socio-economically disadvantaged suburbs. The working class were also disaffected by what they saw as the influence of special interest groups within the Party, which intensified with Labor’s embrace of identity politics. Suggestions were made as to what Labor might do to win back working class loyalty. The thesis also considered the work of Australian scholars who drew on Western European theories of gradual party change to analyse the ALP’s response to changes in local economic and social circumstances. The conclusion reached was that the factions will not change their behaviour, the unions refuse to relinquish their power within the Party and Labor will never again be a mass party. Notwithstanding the failure to reform its structure, by means of taxpayer funding, private donations and modern professional campaigning Labor can survive into the foreseeable future as a major political force. But it will have to prioritise unemployment, reconsider its policies on multiculturalism and immigration, and its embrace of identity politics if it is not to be threatened by the emergence of an anti-politician who will effectively address Australia’s economic ills and who can appeal to the urban working class as successfully as Hanson has to rural and regional Australians.