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Reclaiming the environment for the labour movement

7 September, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Campaigning, Ideology, Policy Development, Social Democracy, Values

This is the first in our Young Progressive Leaders series, over the next couple of weeks we’ll be posting blog entries from those who participated in the inaugural Young Progressive Leaders Program.

Anyone who’s been following the carbon tax debate recently (and really, who can avoid it) may have had cause to wonder, why is the Labor Party pinning so much on climate change?

There must be some who resent the environment being such a dominant issue. Why can’t Labor just talk about health, or education, or industrial relations? Why not leave the environment stuff to the Greens?

The reality, though, is that environment protection must be at the very centre of what Labor stands for. The Labor Party and the labour movement have to reclaim the environment as their issue — not just because they can’t avoid it, but because it’s inextricably linked to everything that they already stand for.

Environment protection is about social justice. Environmental problems are invariably created by the rich and powerful, and suffered by the poor and vulnerable. Environment protection is all about the fair distribution of environmental costs and benefits. It’s a classic labour issue.

Environment protection is about human beings — not just trees and animals. Climate change means more bushfires, more floods, and more droughts, all of which spell disaster for vulnerable people, especially rural communities.

It is working people who will suffer if the companies who employ them can’t adjust to a low-carbon economy. It is the poor and underprivileged who are least able to adapt to climate change and its impacts. It is developing nations who will be underwater first. Clearly, protecting these people is core business for Labor.
It’s not just climate change, either. Human beings benefit from ‘ecosystem services’ provided by many parts of the environment. A healthy Murray-Darling rivers system, for example, is essential to sustaining the regional economy and regional communities.

Environment protection is about economic prosperity. The Labor Party has always stood for tough economic reforms that guaranteed our long-term prosperity. The need to shift our economy to a model that our planet can sustain will be one of the biggest and toughest economic transformations we’ve seen yet.

Even if it weren’t such a classic progressive issue, Labor simply doesn’t have a choice. A strong environment policy is increasingly becoming a political necessity for a progressive party.

Labor has already lost a large chunk of its base over its weak approach to the environment — particularly the decision to dump the CPRS. The electoral cost of a weak environment policy will only grow over time, as the environment challenge grows more and more urgent.

The fact that Labor is losing these voters to the Greens is no consolation. Although Greens preferences generally flow to Labor anyway, Labor needs its progressive base for more than just votes. It needs engaged, inspired, committed activists to drive its values and policies (not to mention political candidates).

Labor is perilously close to losing a generation of progressive activists to the Greens. It needs to reclaim the 66,000 young people who have flocked to the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who spend election day wearing ‘Vote Climate’ T-shirts and handing out how-to-vote cards that preference the Greens.

Besides, imagine if Labor could make the environment a political strength? Imagine if it could overcome this perennial weakness, by ditching the middle-of-the-road policies that open it to attack from the Coalition and the Greens, and fighting from a strong progressive position?

It’s unlikely that Labor will ever be green enough to win back all the voters who have left it for the Greens. But it can certainly win back most of them. It can convince a critical mass of progressive Australians that Labor is unambiguously pro-environment, but better at implementing its policies than a minor party.

After all, that’s the way it used to be. The ALP has a proud history of environment protection. It was Bob Brown who protested the Franklin Dam, but it was Bob Hawke who made sure it wasn’t built. It was Hawke who defied the international community and protected Antarctica from mining. It was Whitlam who introduced Australia’s first environmental impact assessment laws. Let’s face it — Labor was green before it was cool.
If it is serious about winning the fight for progressive Australia, it needs to be green again. So long as the progressive movement in Australia remains split into two parts — red and green — it will lose. The labour movement needs to make peace with the green movement, and bring them back into the fold.

The only way to do that is to get serious about environment protection. Labor needs a Murray-Darling Basin Plan that will actually sustain the Murray-Darling Basin. It needs to be honest and tough about the environmental risks that coal mining and coal-seam gas extraction pose. It needs to get much more serious about sustaining biodiversity. And it needs a strong commitment to climate change, which recognises that a carbon price is just the first step.

It’s been a long, hard fight over the carbon price, no doubt about it. But unless Labor puts the environment at the very front and centre of its values and policies, and rebuilds a single progressive movement that combines the red and greens wings into a winning coalition, it won’t get any easier.

Mick Power is Victorian Co-convenor of the Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN). He works at the Environment Defenders Office (Victoria), a public interest environment law NGO. Follow him on twitter at @mick_power.

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Mature debate on our future needed, not Tea Party-style militancy

17 July, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Campaigning, Fairness, history, Ideology, Values

by Matt Browne and Tim Dixon

Populist short-termism is threatening Australia’s glowing economic potential, write Tim Dixon and Matt Browne.
From outside, Australia seems stuck in a moment of diminished ambition and rancour. Consumer confidence is down and the national mood is sullen. For visitors and Australians abroad, it’s almost incomprehensible.

Unlike others, Australia is not cramped by economic decline, high unemployment, chronic pollution, regional conflicts, disputed borders or the burdens of history.

Even Australia’s tyranny of distance is now becoming, as The Economist has said, an “advantage of adjacency”. And the Australian character – egalitarian, adaptable, with a sunny disposition and a natural curiosity – has just what it takes to succeed in a globalised age. Every nation has its opportunities and its own reasons for optimism, but Australia’s potential truly is exceptional.

The mining boom, for example, might be the most favourable outside economic event in the nation’s history. It’s also probably the last great boom Australia’s fossil fuels will bring. Either way, it has created real possibilities that have barely registered in the national psyche.

This is where a mature debate about Australia’s future is needed. In itself, selling resources does not increase Australia’s wealth – it just converts an asset into cash. What is Australia going to do with the proceeds, and who will benefit?

Australia could make big steps towards a clean energy economy with only small sacrifices. It could put a share of the proceeds into a wealth fund for future generations – as other resource economies have been doing: Norway, Kuwait, the UAE, Chile and even Russia and Nigeria. A wealth fund set up with oil revenues two decades ago by Norway – a much smaller economy than Australia – now exceeds $500 billion, a magnificent endowment that gives Norwegians a ”Plan B” if the nation’s fortunes suddenly change. Australia could also tackle growing social disadvantage at its roots, with large-scale investment in schools and infrastructure across its city fringes.

Each of those steps requires deliberate choices and a sensible national debate. But the state of Australia’s daily news cycle is making such choices harder, with its focus on short-term grievances, partisanship, polls and sideshow politics. Is there any wonder many Australians are feeling deeply frustrated? Politics has turned inward, just at the time when Australia should be looking out and getting things into perspective.

Instead of working through a larger, long-term vision – as an opposition party preparing for government might – Australia’s conservative parties have taken a page from the US Republican playbook, embracing one negative, short-term populist campaign after another. Australia is now on course to become the only advanced economy outside the US where rejecting climate science remains a mainstream part of conservative politics.

Australia stands at an intersection. Can Australians be convinced to forgo short-term benefits to secure greater prosperity in the future?

California’s referendum last November over Proposition 23 shows voters can still reject short-term populism. Polluting industries poured millions into a proposal to delay cuts in greenhouse gas emissions until the economy was back to full employment. But Californians said no – 62 to 38 per cent – because the debate was framed in terms of embracing the clean energy jobs and industries of the future.

Meanwhile, under the influence of the Tea Party, Kansas voted last November to make gun ownership a constitutional right. It’s not the kind of issue that will build a better future – but it was clever politics. Kansas embraced it lock, stock and barrel, 88 to 12 per cent. The Tea Party militancy of states such as Kansas is now infecting Australia’s Coalition parties and many opinion makers – parochial, inward-looking and uninterested in the economics of the future.

Will Australia follow the road to California or to Kansas? Sometimes we make the best choices by pressing the fast-forward button and imagining ourselves looking back, years from now. The course of events that takes us to 2030 is unknown. But there’s little doubt that the countries best placed will be those who are open, tolerant, diverse, highly skilled and less dependent on carbon fuels. Australia can be all those things – and become the country everyone else wants to be.

This article first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald 15 July 2011

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NSW Fringe event: Standing Up for What We Believe in

6 July, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Campaigning, Opposition, Values

John McTernan was Tony Blair’s Political Secretary and Director of Political operations in number 10 Downing street until 2007, helping to make British Labour a long-term party of government.He has worked for the progressive movement for more than 25 years and has a long connection to Australian Labor. 

In 2007, he played a critical role in the Kevin07 election win which brought Labor out of 12 years in opposition. He is currently a Thinker in Residence for the South Australian Government.

In this keynote address as part of the Progressive Australia series, we’ll be discussing the state of the progressive movement worldwide and what hopes and challenges there are for progressive political parties in government and in opposition.

Saturday 9 July 2011, 1 pm Lower Town Hall, Sydney

Download the flyer

 John McTernan
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Developing the Young Progressive Leaders of the future

1 July, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Campaigning, Social Democracy, Values

by Nick Martin

It’s pretty common these days to hear from older generations that young Australians aren’t interested in politics. There’s the common refrain that young people are apathetic, and that they are more willing to ‘like’ something on Facebook than stand up for an issue that they are concerned about. At the Chifley Research Centre we take a different view.

A couple of months ago we held a major conference in Sydney called Building a Progressive Australia. It brought together a great array of local and international speakers from the centre-left of politics who spoke about how to renew our progressive values and to rebuild our progressive movement.

What was most impressive about Building a Progressive Australia was the number of young Australians who came along and made a great contribution to the discussion and debate. We started really important conversations about the need for young people to be given the right skills and tools to go out to their communities to help build a progressive Australia.

Following on from these discussions, we decided that we needed to step up to the task of providing these opportunities for progressive young people. To get things underway, we’ve just launched a new program called the Young Progressive Leaders Program.

We’re putting the call out for 8 young Australians to sign up for two days of learning and discussion about making Australia a more progressive country. Convened by former Western Australian Premier Geoff Gallop and in partnership with Campaign Action, the 8 successful applicants will be looking at current developments in progressive politics, social-democratic thought and theory and also gaining really practical organising skills for making social change happen.

Through the program we aim to invest in new, young progressive leaders – the types of people who will be involved in the progressive politics of the next 20 years.

You can download the application form and more information here. Let your friends and networks know about the program and help build a stronger progressive movement!

DETAILS

What: Young Progressive Leaders Program

When: 13-14 August 2011

Where: Sydney

Application: Closes 22 July – get in quick!

More info here

Nick Martin is Chair of the Chifley Research Centre

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Technology is a great tool – but it is people that will change politics

28 June, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Campaigning, Ideology, Opposition, Values

by Tim Dixon and Jeremy Heimans

When technology comes to politics, journalists seem to replace their boilerplate cynicism with frothy enthusiasm. In America, an ageing Newt Gingrich is acclaimed because he launches his presidential bid on Twitter. David Cameron takes a question from Twitter in a town hall meeting and behold, it’s the Glorious Revolution over again.

They’re not all wrong: new technology confronts old politics with profound change. But much of the buzz around social media today misses the real point. Back in the 1970s, Larry King was taking live questions from his listeners during his radio interviews. That was a more real, spontaneous form of participation than today’s contrived tweet-your-question events, when thousands of people send questions to the prime minister via Twitter – only to have someone else decide which 10 questions get asked.

To re-energise democracy, we need to spend less time talking about technology, and more time understanding how it helps ordinary people develop a sense of their own agency and creates new sources of power.

The power of the traditional institutions of government, political parties and the media has long been exercised through top-down structures and gatekeepers who controlled access to ideas, information and mass audiences. But the gatekeepers are now losing control, as individuals realise their capacity to join with others and exercise real power.

This is the real heart of the change made possible by social media. This is what democracy activists in the Middle East have been saying about the Arab spring. The real change for Egyptians was not the technology of Facebook – it was the moment when one by one, people realised they were not alone. As the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page accumulated thousands and thousands of people, young Egyptians for the first time realised that together, they had the numbers. Collectively, they had power. From the movement they realised that, getting people onto the streets was just logistics.

The leaders of democracy movements often say their greatest challenge is to make individuals believe they can make a difference. New technologies make this possible. Campaigns that can generate hundreds of thousands of followers in just a few days revolutionise people’s belief that they can achieve impact when they come together. This is not just transformative in the developing world – but also in the developed world, where confidence in democracy has been eroded by deepening frustrations with an insider political class and their grip on institutions.

Many observers have been struck by the absence of visible leaders in the Arab spring uprisings. But this is precisely what online organising makes common: movements based on shared values, not charismatic leadership. The new model for social movements is not leaderless, but it is focused on building individuals’ sense of their own agency – not the leader’s power.

As new movements adapt organisational structures and strategies, it is not just leadership structures that change. New movements will rely less on sloganeering and more on compelling storytelling. A lesson of social movements through the ages is the importance of people being able to tell their own stories. Technology makes possible the rapid sharing of those stories in ways unimaginable in the past, such as through peer-to-peer networks which in some ways take us back to village life of past eras. Yet it is decidedly different, because these networks also enable collaborative power.

New movements also bring together the global and the hyper-local. Avaaz.org is helping to create a sense of global identity for individuals, where their local actions are dots on a larger canvas. Climate change campaigners 350.org have staged simultaneous days of action in local neighbourhoods throughout the world, engaging hundreds of thousands of people.

We’re only beginning to learn how to harness new technologies to create these new movements and new sources of power. But at every turn, we must engage with institutional decision-makers, not as helpless citizens approaching all-powerful leaders, but as the powerful engaging the powerful. The technological tools will keep changing and evolving, but the most powerful changes, as individuals start believing they can make a real difference, are in people’s hearts and minds.

This article first appeared on Comment is Free on 26 July 2011

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Crisis = Danger + Opportunity

10 May, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Ideology, Values

By Jenny McAllister

Its said that the Chinese character for crisis is a combination of the characters for danger and opportunity.

What can this fact tell us about Review 2010′s warning of the crisis facing the party?

Review 2010 uncovered deep concern amongst party members and affiliates about the direction our party has taken in recent years.

The overarching grievance is a perception that we are slowly but sure transforming from a large political movement to a small professional party. The decline in membership, debate, campaigning and community activity are symptomatic of this overall trend.

But the Review uncovered something more than discontent. The Review has also tapped a rich vein of enthusiasm and commitment to the Labor project.

At last weekend’s Progressive Australia conference in Sydney, over 500 members and supporters expressed their optimism for renewal.

Drawing strength from the experiences of renewal in Australian trade unions, the US Democratic party, and the British Labour Party, the debate ranged widely.

How can we use the tools of community organising to build support in the community for a Labor agenda? What institutions do we need to push, expand and challenge the ideas which drive our movement? What behaviours do we currently reward through our rules and culture, and what needs to change? How can we best tell our story so it connects with our past and Australia’s past?

The energy, passion and optimism in the room on that day made me wonder briefly if this was indeed the same declining institution documented by Messrs Faulkner, Bracks and Carr?

I know similar discussions are being had by ALP members across the country.

Part of my job as ALP Vice President is to make sure this conversation is heard, and  becomes part of the national discussion about our response to Review 2010.

Over the next seven days I’ll be meeting with party members in Launceston, Hobart, Melbourne and Adelaide to hear your priorities for reform and change.

I’ll be reporting back to the National Executive on what you tell me about how you’d like to respond to the Review.

We should never waste a good crisis. The energy and enthusiasm we’re seeing for a renewed Labor Party is an opportunity not to be missed.

–

Jenny McAllister is the Senior Vice-President of the Australian Labor Party. Jenny believes that active party membership can make a difference on important issues. She has been active in campaigns for the environment, peace and women’s parliamentary representation. In 2003 Jenny co-founded the Labor Environment Activist Network. Now a national organisation, the LEAN campaigns within the ALP on environmental issues, particularly climate change.

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Conference Wrap Up: Building a Progressive Australia

6 May, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Campaigning, Values

By Nick Martin

Being the oldest political party in Australia, Labor and the progressive movement have a proud legacy of innovation and progress in Australian society. Our movement has laid the basis for nation building and economic growth, the expansion of social services and one of the world’s best social nets.

Nick Martin speaking at Progressive Australia

At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century it is clear that there are new challenges that we now face as a progressive movement. Challenges that must be addressed if we are to continue to be a source of innovation and progress in Australia.

Over last weekend more than 500 Labor members, supporters and Progressive Australians gathered at Sydney University to take up that challenge and plan the future of the progressive movement in Australia.

The Building a Progressive Australia Conference was organised by the Chifley Research Centre, Labor’s national think-tank, with two very clear objectives.

  1. First, the conference aimed to renew Labor’s values for the 21st century, looking to the timeless goals of our movement but refocusing them on current challenges.
  2. Second, the conference provided an important opportunity to explore ways to rebuild the progressive movement, drawing particular lessons from our history and the experience of similar political parties overseas.

The participants in the conference and the many more who participated online deserve congratulations for starting a critical conversation about how to keep Australia on a progressive political course.

Sharing a Vision for Progressive Australia

Attendees came from all states and territories and were joined by colleagues from New Zealand, the UK and US. Keynotes and plenary sessions helped to frame the debate.

James Purnell, former Secretary of State in the last UK Labour Government gave an overview of the current debates in social-democracy over our commitment to reform and renewal. Barack Obama’s model of community organising was outlined by Mitch Stewart, the Director of Organizing for America. They were joined by Matt Browne from the leading US progressive think-tank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), and Tom McMahon the pioneering head of the US Democrats who first implemented organising strategies for US elections.

Australian speakers also featured strongly, sharing their vision for a progressive Australia. Newly elected leader of the NSW Labor Party, John Robertson, delivered an important address to the conference on the need for Labor to embrace a reform agenda and to open up our party to greater participation from members and supporters.

Ged Kearney from the ACTU spoke about the need to connect with new constituencies, like contractors and others in marginal employment, to build the Labor base. Speakers from the union movement, academics and voices from important campaigns in climate change and community services all added their voices to the discussion and debate.

Active Government & Civil Society

A key discussion at the conference included the need to reconnect a Labor agenda with its historic role as a movement outside of parliament and firmly embedded in civil society.

James Purnell and a number of speakers drew on the experience of community organisers in the UK and the US to make the point that progressive politics is more often about listening to constituencies than governing from on high. The way progressives can rebuild from opposition was an important conversation for Labor members and supporters from New South Wales and Victoria, with former Premier Bob Carr and Chief Minister Clare Martin leading discussion.

One of the important international experiences that has a direct relevance for Australia is the implementation of an organising agenda here. In the UK, the work of groups like Citizens UK have rejuvenated urban community politics by picking up local political issues and organising communities of interest around them.

In the US, the organising experience is firmly entrenched in the progressive community and in the culture of the US Democrats. The need for respect and empowerment of supporters is now part of the election campaigning techniques employed by the Democrats. In Australia, the work of groups like the Sydney Alliance provide a new example of how faith groups, unions and local communities in our largest city can use organising to build local power. The new training organisation, Campaign Action, has now demonstrated how progressive campaign training and organising can help win seats.

Where to from here?

Many people have asked ‘what are the next steps?’ We’ve kick-started that conversation but now it’s your turn to continue the conversation in your local community, with your friends or in your union or Labor branches.

Over coming weeks the team at Progressive Australia will be releasing the videos from the sessions along with a toolkit to help you take the ideas discussed at the conference to a wider audience. Our website will continue to be a site for open discussion and debate on the future of progressive politics.

We are committed to growing the movement through Progressive Australia using the forumfor an ongoing conversation with Party members, supporters and the community.

In coming months we will have more to say about future events around Australia so stay tuned to www.progressiveaustralia.org.au for updates and to continue the conversation

The passion, conviction and excitement shown throughout the weekend is simply the beginning of something bigger. Renewing Labor’s mission to deliver genuine progress in Australia won’t be achieved without much hard work, but it is the only challenge that really matters.

How will you be renewing the progressive movement in your local community?

–

Nick Martin is the Assistant National Secretary of the Australian Labor Party and Deputy Campaign Director. He is the Chair of the Chifley Research Centre, Labor’s national think-tank, and has played a critical role in steering Labor’s National Policy Committee.

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The hard labour of rebuilding progressive politics

29 April, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Campaigning, Values

The community’s distaste right now for politicians and the political process is really something. Labor is suffering the brunt of that disenchantment – and we’ve done our fair share to contribute to it. Yet maybe the firestorm of state electoral losses and public disillusionment can open seeds of renewal. The massive scale of the NSW defeat – and the sullen mood of voters across the country – suggest we need to think beyond short-term tactics to larger questions about rebuilding progressive politics.

One of the most important structural challenges is to rebuild our community base. Around the world, a steep decline in mass party membership is by default making social democratic parties professional, managerialist organisations – easier to run than democratic organisations, but culturally disconnected from the people they seek to represent. In place of strong organic community links they become bloodless public relations organisations – managing a political brand, researching and testing political messages, raising funds and executing election campaigns. Values like fairness, social justice, compassion, community and sustainability get reduced to mere ‘brand attributes’, instead of deep-seated convictions that shape the policies and culture of the organisation.

Labor has not yet become that kind of organisation, but our community links have atrophied. Once, a strong union membership base gave us deep connections to local communities. Communities were more localised, and members were often involved in many voluntary and social activities – like sports, schools, churches and service organisations. Party members were the eyes and ears of their communities and they kept caucus members in touch. We truly were a labour movement, and our local networks helped thousands of people with practical things like adult education and emergency relief.

Today, things have changed. Community life is less localised, and while there’s still local community champions among our membership, most are greying and fewer are taking their place. Yet we have barely changed our formal party structures. We are left with the formal relics of a past era – like the obligation of attendance at dull, procedural branch meetings. This simply isn’t a relevant or authentic way for people to channel their political energies, so people go elsewhere.

You find similar trends in churches, which remain among the strongest community organisations in Australia. Smaller local churches that stuck with old patterns and formal styles have declined, while the well-organised, high-energy Pentecostal megachurches have enjoyed explosive growth. Faith is alive and strong in Australia, but its expression is changing.  So too in politics, groups like GetUp! have become the megachurches of our political landscape mobilising tens of thousands for every campaign they run – while in our depleted ALP branches, the poor branch secretary faithfully  carries on, like a church organist playing to a row of empty pews.

Politics is about power, and progressive politics can never be just about exercising the power of government while we are in office. It must always be about distributing power more evenly in society – which means reducing the power of elites and empowering communities. In the words of the father of community organising, Saul Alinsky, in 1971: “Change comes from power, and power comes from organisation. In order to act people must get together.” This is not about the formalities of membership – it is about actually organising people on the ground to work together.

In the modern Labor Party, we rarely think of politics in terms of building power by building movements – we are so preoccupied with the immediate tactics of electoral politics and a state-centred model of achieving change. We need to broaden our approach. Our strategies need to engage people in our political battles, instead of operating only at elite levels – a lesson particularly highlighted by climate change policy in our first term in office. The way we operate now, we don’t even ask the question how we might mobilise a movement around big reform challenges, because we’re so accustomed to thinking that change comes from the top down. After the defeat of British Labour in 1931, R. H.Tawney argued in his essay The Choice Before the Labour Party that Labour, “when it ought to have called people to a long and arduous struggle, it too often did the opposite. It courted them with hopes of cheaply won benefits… It demanded too little and offered too much.” Perhaps that is true of Australian Labor, 80 years later.

As the party’s 2010 election review recommended, we should look closely at what we can learn from community organising about how we might engage and mobilise people for change. Saul Alinsky’s efforts in Chicago in the 1930s began America’s rich history of organising, and it continues across the US today. In the last ten years, Britain has seen the success of London Citizens and groups in northern England. British Labour is engaging with this model – Ed Miliband recently brought on board Britain’s champion of organising, Maurice Glasman, to advance the agenda in response to the UK Conservatives’ Big Society initiative. A new Australian initiative, the Sydney Alliance, is also in its early stages.

Community organising is not merely a tactic – it involves a patient, long-term process of developing local leaders and acting on priorities chosen by local communities, to advance the common good. It means helping local communities rebuild their community life and seeking to overcome the alienation and disconnectedness of modern life. Combine strong community networks with the rapid mobilisation potential of online technologies, and you could begin to restore people’s faith in the capacity of politics to deliver real change. It is happening elsewhere – witness the success of popular movements that have successfully mobilised mass public support for anti-corruption laws in Brazil and India during the past year.

Rebuilding our community base is part of the larger challenge of rebuilding Australia’s progressive infrastructure with a plurality of organisations and institutions. Just as the dominance of big department stores has been diluted by a much more diffuse and competitive retail sector, the centrality of major political parties is being diluted by a more diverse political landscape. The Labor Party can no longer embody all the progressive aspirations of Australians. Many people will feel a stronger attachment to the Greens, to progressive campaigning groups like GetUp! and to single issue groups. Especially when Labor is on the nose with the public, we need to reach out to this broader progressive base that may do a better job than us in mobilising people and making the case for change.

In thinking of how we strengthen Australia’s progressive infrastructure, we could learn from the way American progressives have built up their infrastructure during the past decade – with progressive media, think tanks, advocacy organisations, research capacity, strategic analysis and leadership development. Better communications strategy has been a priority, based on the recognition that since the Reagan era conservatives had reframed many debates through a disciplined, energetic communications strategy. At the leading progressive think-tank, the Center for American Progress, half the organisation’s resources are devoted to its communications capability. CAP drives the daily rapid response from progressive organisations to the hugely powerful conservative media, and it sets the benchmark for effective campaigning by Democrat candidates.

A progressive Australian future relies a stronger progressive infrastructure than what we have today, and it requires more than just renewal of the Labor Party. We must scale up the nascent think-tank infrastructure. We need to generate greater diversity in the media to counter the growing dominance of conservative voices, just as we did with Labor newspapers a century ago. We need to invest in leadership development programs. We need to continue the renewal of the union movement. And we must improve collaboration across the different parts of the progressive movement. These are all components in winning future elections – and just as importantly, ensuring that we can achieve change when we win.

–

Tim Dixon is Senior Fellow at purpose.com in New York, a home for 21st century movement-building. From 2005 to 2010 he was speechwriter and senior economic adviser to Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley.

 

 

 

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Reviving the common good

29 April, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in Ideology, Social Democracy, Values

David McKnight

I want to begin to discuss the ideas and values which underlie social democratic parties and institutions by looking at the other end of the political spectrum.

Over the last 25 years it has been the Right in Australia and in other countries which has engaged in the most fundamental and deep ideological renewal. In crude shorthand, we have seen the passing of an older kind of conservatism and the ascendancy of an aggressive Right, based on free market values. On the basis of this, it has succeeded in undermining social democratic ideas and capturing the political agenda.

On the broad Left, no such ideological re-thinking has really occurred. The Left has been in a largely reactive and defensive stance for a long while.  What has happened is the stitching together of the demands of a variety of causes and issues. At best this can operate as a useful coalition of unions, ethnic groups, women, the environment lobby and so on.  At worst, it is an opportunist patchwork with no guiding values or organising ideas, and defaulting a series of separate deals and political patronage.  Along the way, Labor has accepted far too much of the free market dogma  — a dogma which argues that whatever the question, the answer is always the market.

The reason we are here today, I believe, is that the renewal of the Right has been very effective — to the point where it is not only poised to take government nationally,   but also to take government with some the most reactionary ideas deeply opposed to everything social democratic parties have stood for.

There are lots of ways of responding to this situation– but I want to keep the discussion at the level of ideas and values.

If you ask people to identify the fundamental values that Labor or social democracy should stand for you get a variety of answers. One popular response is that Labor is about promoting equality; another typical response is that it is about care for others, including support for welfare state;

These are important qualities but they do not identify what I think is one of the  basic values of social democracy.

One of the core values which historically made social democratic parties different from conservatives is the recognition that working people share a common interest in certain things — as well as having individual self interests. That is, that there are certain things which we can only achieve jointly and by co-operation and which cannot be achieved privately or individually. Another name for  this is the common good or the public interest. The idea that working people — or today, people more generally –  share a set of common interests may seem obvious, but it has been a profoundly important point in defining social democracy over the last 150 years.

In terms of social democracy, the notion of a common interests was demonstrated originally by the creation of unions. This was a recognition that individual workers faced a common threat from exploitative employers — and they realised that it was only by joining in collective action and collective structures that all could benefit. This spirit of common interests was carried over into the programs for government developed by the first social democratic parties in the late 19th and early twentieth century. A variety of public institutions were created such as schools and hospitals, public services, and so on. In effect, this was an infrastructure for a civilised society, in place of the jungle of self-interest.

The idea that a society shared extensive common interests became broadly accepted beyond the realms of social democratic parties.  Following WW2  the reconstruction of the relationship between markets, state and society was accepted by nearly all, including conservatives figures such as Menzies. But beginning from the 1970s, this consensus changed in ways I’ve already described. A philosophy took hold which, at bottom, argued that the common good could only be achieved by maximising all individual self interests.

At the moment we are seeing a slow re-construction of Australian society into one in which self-interest and individualism is elevated as the supreme good. The first wave of this belief occurred in the economy with privatisation of a large number of govt institutions. We now face second wave of marketisation which is aimed at introducing the market and market values into a large number of  social institutions and relationships. The latest example concerns public education where its advocates believe that creating a market in schools with competition and choice,  based on a system of national testing, should be the preferred mechanism for improvement. I think this is a profound step backwards.

I’ll close with a reference to the contemporary situation. When social democracy began in the late 19th century , its notion of the common good — which was called socialism — was aimed at building institutions to protect working people from the vagaries of the market and from poverty.

Social democratic  philosophy was based on a notion of the common good as a form of protection, security and solidarity against these threats.

Today much has changed. The underpinnings of a civilised society exist thanks largely to social democracy and its agenda.  But today we face a new round of threats, not just from the unfettered market, but from the consequences of humanity’s struggle to live well and prosper.

That threat is climate change and with it, the even deeper question of sustainability. Grappling with it presents difficulties, in terms of traditional social democratic practices. For example, social democratic outlook both practically and theoretically based on improving living standards and the quality of life.  It never conceived of the idea of limits, never conceived that the call for endless and ever-increasing affluence might one day have to be abandoned.

Yet this is the case.  Climate change is an unavoidable and world-shaking set of events whose dangerous consequences are getting closer every year. Integrating an understanding of it — and a response — into a traditional social democratic philosophy is difficult, though not impossible.  In doing so, we need to ground our response in the two basic values I have outlined – a modernised notion of the common good and a new idea of protection and security against threats.

–

David McKnight works as an academic at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture War which discusses the need for a radical renewal of the progressive political vision.

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The Case for Active Government

17 April, 2011   
Published by Progressive Australia in history, Ideology, Social Democracy, Uncategorized, Values

Jean Curthoys

Social democracy is such a vague notion that it is customary to spell it out as a set of concrete policies. I’m not going to do that because I think there is a general point to be made about the framing of such social democratic agendas – and because I’m a philosopher and we specialize in generalities. I shall begin by picking up on just one sentence in a recent letter from Luke Foley to members of the ALP, a sentence I found very encouraging. Summing up his proposals for party renewal, Foley wrote this: ‘Above all, we should take as our guiding principle a belief in active government as a force for good’ (my emphases).

This is no bland motherhood statement, although on a quick reading it might appear to be. In the present climate in which the neo-liberal insistence on ‘small government’ has captured the day and the Labor Party is on the defensive about the allegation of ‘big government’, it is what Sir Humphrey would have called a ‘very brave’ stance. ‘Active government’ has so long been associated with wasteful and interfering bureaucracy at best, and with the evils of totalitarian socialism at worst, that almost nobody admits to thinking it a good thing. Since it is manifest that many of the challenges facing us now can only be addressed by government, it is imperative that these associations be challenged.

A commitment to ‘active government as a force for good’ is fundamental to social democracy. It is what transforms a social democratic agenda from a ‘laundry list’ of worthy objectives, which may or may not be achievable, into a challenging and inspiring project. It is this conception of the role of government which makes social democracy the democratic project of late modernity. What it implies is extending the reach of democracy to the economy or, as some put it (I don’t know if Foley is among them) to the ‘management of capitalism’. And this means government which both regulates the economy and participates in it through the provision of public infrastructure – otherwise known as the welfare state. No other political tradition aspires to develop democracy in this way. Genuine liberals are democrats, to be sure, but their conception of politics basically stops at economy. Neo-liberalism explicitly aims to limit the scope of parliamentary democracy lest it unsettle the supposedly self-regulating mechanisms of the market. Marxism, because of its ‘after the revolution’ mentality, essentially does not have a conception of politics. Fascism, obviously, doesn’t count a democratic movement. Social democrats have to stop being on the defensive, stop agreeing as Julia Gillard did recently, that they ‘have moved beyond the days of big government and big welfare’ and go on the offensive. We are the democratic movement; the movement for ‘small government’ is not.

I’ll try to make this a little more concrete in  terms of the particular brief of the panel to which this is a contribution: ‘looking back to look forwards’. I want to go back, though, to a whole period of western democracy, that which lately has become known as the post-war ‘golden age of social democracy’ – roughly from 1945 to the late 70s. Admittedly, in Australia, this so-called ‘golden age’ was mostly administered by a governing Liberal Party, though many of its achievements were brought in by Labor. But the reason it is known as ‘the golden age of social democracy’ is that this was a time in which both sides of politics were committed to some economic planning, to broadly Keynesian economics, and to the welfare state. In short, it was a time when broadly social democratic ideas defined the agenda.

There are now two influential books making the case that social democrats should draw positively on this period. One is Tony Judt’s death bed appeal to the next generation, Ill Fares the Land. The other is Sheri Berman’s more theoretical The Primacy of Politics. It is not an easy case to make. Most of their ‘golden age’ is retrospectively loathed by most of those who lived through it. It overlaps with the time Paul Keating scorned as that of John Howard’s ‘white picket fence’-  the time of women in the home, aborigines in reserves, gay men in the closet, and the aim of life a house in the suburbs. Only cultural conservatives admit to nostalgia about this post-war period. However, as Tony Judt tells it, there is something important missing from the memories of both radicals and conservatives.

In his recollection, the post-war period was also a time when the vast majority of the population used public health, public education and public transport. This shared experience and frequent contact with other sections of the population made for a genuine, if unconscious, sense of community. This tacit sense of community was an experience of citizenship, of belonging to a nation in terms of something more than chauvinistic pride. It manifested, he says, in a general preparedness to pay taxes for the ‘public good’ whether or not one directly benefited, for it was understood that a strong public sphere was for everyone’s good, providing security, enabling trust. ‘User pays’ was not part of the social imagination and social welfare was seen as a right, not a degradation. The tendency to unequal wealth, intrinsic to a free capitalist market, was held in check. The picture may be overdrawn, but the ‘golden age’ is still proof that capitalism can be managed politically, and overall managed quite well. For in these respects of security, equality, wealth, and equality of opportunity, this period certainly was golden in comparison to the deregulated capitalism which came after.

Sheri Berman takes the argument one step further by emphasizing just what an unprecedented and unique achievement the post-war period was. She shows it to be the outcome of a long history, beginning in the 1890s, when social democrats first tried to synthesize of some of the insights of Marxism and liberal democracy, while addressing the failings of both. For social democrats acknowledge, what liberals don’t, that the capitalist market is not intrinsically democratic, that the inequality of economic power it produces is an inequality of real power. In short, that democracy must be extended to be meaningful. But they also recognize, what Marxist socialists don’t, that capitalism is more efficient, more innovative and far less coercive than socialist planning – and that, in any case, it is here to stay. But it was only the experience of active government, that is, economic planning, during the Second World War which demonstrated that social democracy was possible and enabled social democratic ideas to seize the political agenda. That the golden age lasted as long as it did is further proof that ‘active government’ can be a force for good.  It is now our best hope.

Jean Curthoys is an Australian philosopher who has written extensively on the topics of social democracy and feminism.

 

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