SPEECH BY PETER PRIMROSE MLC TO THE INAUGURAL ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEWCASTLE LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE OF THE ALP, HELD 4th NOVEMBER 2011 AT NEW LAMBTON.
It's a great honour to have been invited to speak with you this evening, at a very important gathering of members and supporters of the Australian Labor Party in the Hunter Region.
As I always do, I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land, and pay my respects to their elders, both past and present.
Tonight, I'd like to talk about passion.
Passion and politics and trade unions.
Why feeling angry or inspired, or excited is essential for all of us who take our politics seriously, whether we're interested in local, state, national or international politics.
Local government is the level of government that's closest to the people.
You've all heard that many times before, but it's true.
I loved my time in local government. Funding youth centres, footpaths and libraries. Having David Jones raided by our health surveyors, getting air conditioning for the baby health centre, and calls at 2 am about barking dogs.
By the way, I always returned those 2 am phone calls with updated information, at precisely 2 am the next morning. They never rang me back at 2 am again.
I asked a number of friends here in the Hunter what sort of things I should talk about this evening.
When talking about local government in Newcastle, most mentioned Joy Cummings, the first woman to be elected not only as Lord Mayor in Newcastle, but the first female Lord Mayor in Australia.
Joy was a Labor Mayor, serving from 1974 to 1984. She is remembered not only for her compassion and her many achievements, but also her energy. She was a strong role model for women looking to enter politics. That's a heritage worth celebrating.
Joy knew that being passionate about something means that you care about it. She was active in the Labor Party, but knew that what that meant in reality was also being active in the community that she was trying to serve.
The Labor Party is not a closed organisation. Without the fresh air from community involvement, we become stale and lethargic. We are at our best when all our branch members are part of, and not apart from, other local organisations.
If you don't care about something, if you don't want something protected or something changed, then why are you involved in politics?
New members join the Party when they believe they can be active and achieve the things they care about.
Being in the Australian Labor Party means that you're passionate about using the political system to get things done.
My proposal to you tonight is a simple one.
The election result in New South Wales last March was our worst result since 1904.
We got smashed.
Many people smarter than me have listed myriad reasons why we lost.
People with weeks, even months, of membership of the Party, have found their moment of fame by giving an "insider's" account of the "crises" tearing the Party apart.
You're left with the strong impression that If you googled the words "crisis" or "lost cause", the ALP website would pop up.
But I can tell you this – voters didn't go to the ballot box and vote against us just because they didn't like our internal structures.
No-one has ever told me that they'd voted against us because of what was in our rule book, or how many delegates went to Annual Conference.
I strongly support internal Party reform. I think it's vital. That's why I take it so seriously. My argument is only that structural reform is not an end in itself. It's a means to an end that we cannot lose sight of.
Of course we need to change how we do things within the Labor Party.
We need to listen and empower our rank and file, be democratic, transparent and accountable. We should demand and expect that everyone, from the National Secretary down, follows the rules instead of ignoring them.
Preselections must be held when the rules say they should – at least one year before an election. That's not only smart campaigning, it's also in our rules.
Both the Faulkner – Carr - Bracks, and the Watkins - Chisholm, Reports are a great start.
Party reform and democratic preselections can help prevent the scandals of the recent past, which were born out of an attitude of entitlement to public office , and disregard for rank and file members.
But internal Party reform is not the end of the process.
It's one of the means to an end.
Over the last few months so much essential debate has gone into Party Reform, that many of us have forgotten that the whole purpose of the ALP is to develop progressive policies, based on a coherent vision of change, and then to take these policies to the electorate.
We lost government because the electorate lost faith in our ability to govern in their interests, and they didn't like what we had to offer.
Party reform is about our internal structures, but it's also about reconnecting us with the electorate by developing and promoting the progressive policies that we believe in.
Throughout our history, Labor has always been the Party of the future.
Always prepared to look beyond the horizon.
We argue, we debate and we criticise so passionately because for us, our policies are not protests or gimmicks, but undertakings that Labor in government will make a reality.
Ours has always been a message of hope; while our opponents have focussed on a message of fear. And as we all know, fear so often is a more potent emotion than hope.
As Ged Kearney has stated so well, ours has been a mission to build up, rather than to tear down. To include, rather than to exclude.
Ours has always been a message of fairness for all, rather than privilege for some.
For one hundred and twenty years, our challenge has been to win political office. To translate our passion and values into policies that change the lives of working people.
But I think we need to show a bit more self interest when it comes to our policies.
I am sure if the founders of the Labor Party were to listen in to many of our policy debates today, they would be amazed at the lengths we go to, to show that we have no real personal interest in the matter, and to keep the debate at an intellectual level.
The founders of our Party knew whose side they were on.
The things they wanted from government were literally matters of life and death for them and their families. Adequate wages, old age pensions, child health services.
They were not afraid of openly promoting the self interests of their class.
They were not afraid to show passion about their policies, because they were passionate about their income, health and safety, and that of their mates. It wasn't selfishness for individual gain. It was about collective action to improve the social good.
Yet today, there are calls by some for a lessening of the role in our Party, of the trade union movement, one the key groups still prepared to regularly arc up and be passionately self-interested for their class.
Now, I have always regarded Rodney Cavalier as a friend.
But like many others, he has fallen into the political equivalent of the logical fallacy of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc.’ – loosely translated this means: After this; therefore because of this.
In Rodney’s terms, it means: The unions have had an important role in the ALP .... the ALP lost the election ....therefore it's the unions' fault,
By all means we should have a debate about our structure.
But let's focus on the policies for a moment. I want those who say that unions are a relic of the past, and want to get unions out of the ALP, to tell me this: which union inspired policies are the problem? Which ones do you believe are no longer relevant to Labor voters, or have led to the ALP being condemned as having 'lost its way'?
• Support for Industrial Manslaughter legislation?
• Advocacy for Green Jobs?
• Paid Parental Leave?
• Opposition to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq?
• Green Bans?
• Support for the Pay Equity Case?
• Support for Asbestos Safety Certificates?
• Opposition to electricity privatisation?
• Compulsory Superannuation? The current 9% is about to increase to 12%, meaning a $500 billion boost to workers’ retirement savings by 2035.
The list goes on and on. Trade unions were important to our past. They are critical today to our policy credentials as a progressive party that's passionate for change. They are vital to our future.
Now I don't want to get personal about this, but while the unions and most of the rest of the electorate were opposing the Carr/Egan plan to privatise our electricity industry, Rodney Cavalier was one of the few people in the ALP who supported and campaigned for the privatisation.
Historically trade unions have worked with students, women, environmentalists, peace activists, indigenous peoples and a wide range of other community groups in a co-operative movement based on very strong principles of justice and equity.
I am a proud member of my union, the AMWU.
I am a member of the ALP.
I am a unionist with an ALP card.
I am not a member of the ALP with a Union card. This is an important difference.
I joined the Party because I believed that ALP membership was the best way for me to have influence on government.
My argument is that Labor would be more attractive to the electorate if unions had been more effective in getting their policies adopted by the Party, not less.
The disappointment in the electorate is not because Labor has adopted progressive policies. Rather, it's because we have failed to do so.
On the day that Neville Wran announced his retirement as Premier of NSW, at the ALP State Conference in June 1986, he said "Never let go the union links. Without the unions you can always have some kind of social democratic party. But you can’t have a Labor Party without the unions."
Neville Wran was right.
As a Party, it seems that we have been increasingly driven by the same focus groups and advisers with the same economic ideology as the Liberals. We are presented to the electorate as a brand, rather than as true believers with a progressive vision. Our policies have often become blurred with those of our opponents.
Lacking passion, lacking the burning desire to work in the best interests of our class, Labor has become reduced to a brand name - just like the Liberals.
So when the contents of the boxes are the same, all you can do is change the name on the box. In New South Wales, Labor changed leaders as we sought to give our Brand an edge.
It didn't work.
There is already a party for people who object to trade unions, and the policies of the labour movement.
It’s called the Liberal Party.
If we are to survive and win future elections, then we must look again to those people who rejected the Party at the ballot box last March - traditional Labor voters who no longer found anything to identify with, or be passionate about, in the ALP's policies.
The union movement is a fundamental source of our collective heritage, our vision for a better society. It is a source of passion and energy precisely because it is made up of people who truly believe that a better society is both possible and worth fighting for.
The related challenge is to use the internal Party reform that is underway to inspire and ignite Labor supporters. The ideal place to take back our heritage is here in the Hunter, and I will be proud if I join you on that journey.
We've heard a lot lately about Ben Chifley and his Light on the Hill speech, mainly in the gimmicky titles of books and articles.
One blow-in former MP recently showed how little understanding or respect he had for our history and beliefs. He mocked Chifley’s passion in the title of his own self-serving diatribe, merely as a way to sell his unworthy book.
I feel sorry for him. Chifley's vision and his passion were born out of real struggle, not a sense of entitlement.
Everyone here will remember the tragic events in the mine at Beaconsfield, Tasmania.
While I know that you would all join me in mourning the loss of Larry Knight, we also celebrated the remarkable skill and courage of the rescue team.
There was never any doubt in the minds of Brant Webb or Todd Russell that their mates would move heaven and earth - almost literally in this case - to save them.
And there was not a moment's hesitation, despite the dreadful conditions, for the rescue team. They worked extraordinary hours, against unbelievable odds, to save their mates' lives.
If you were looking for a demonstration of what Australian workers will do for each other, this was it.
I have to tell you that if I was Barry O'Farrell or Tony Abbott down there, I wouldn't want to be relying on the Australian Business Council or my mates in the Coalition Party Room to save my life.
Our blow in friend and others like him can never understand this kind of commitment or comradeship.
So, yes I do feel sorry for him and his kind.
That's the difference between us and them.
Can I finish by citing another great message that Ben Chifley has for us today. Ben Chifley said:
"There are, in our movement, some people who feel they can best serve their personal interests or political expediency by seeing how far they can go to the Right without actually becoming members of the Liberal Party. Fancy being in the Labor Movement without radical tendencies. You cannot afford to be in the middle of the road. You have to be quite clear about what you believe in, whether popular or unpopular, and you have to fight for it. I could no longer be called a young radical, but if I think a thing is worth fighting for, no matter what the penalty is, I will fight for the right, and the truth and justice will always prevail.
Be passionate about what you believe in.
Thank you for listening to me this evening.
[ENDS]
