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"We’re not dead yet": connecting with the missing middle

By Wayne Swan - posted Friday, 15 February 2002


We also have to look at party reforms.

Some years ago in an article I co-authored with the late Clem Lloyd on the development of national factions in the ALP and its impact on the party we concluded that:

"the top has been strengthened while the base has been weakened, a circumstance as fraught with danger in politics as it is in architecture."

Nothing could be more true.

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We should change the rules to make as much of Party activity and election campaigning open to mass participation and that includes getting the rank and file and affiliated trade unionists more involved.

There is a critique around that argues the broader trade union movement have been an impediment to a successful election outcome for Labor.

A significant number of Australian workers belong to trade unions. These men and women have a right to organise to protect their rights. Labor should not back away from its support via unionism for Australian workers and their families.

It is my contention that some aspects of factionalism are a far bigger impediment than any concerns about unions.

While factions are an important management tool, rigid factionalism combined with declining branch membership levels within the Labor Party presents more challenges for the connectedness of the Party with its grassroots than shuffling numbers on the conference floor.

Rigid factionalism has tended to make the party too inwardly focused – it has bureaucratised and distanced the party from the community.

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Too much of the Party’s precious talent and energy has been diverted away from electing candidates and into just advancing factional interests.

Any senior member of the Party, me included, who has been involved over time knows how debilitating this can be.

In many of their public actions the factions are not seen to be driven by altruism or ideas, but just number crunching.

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This is an edited version of an address given to the Fabian Society in Melbourne, 30 January 2002.  The full text of the speech is here.



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About the Author

Wayne Swan MP is the Member for Lilley (Qld). He is Federal Labor Shadow Treasurer and author of Postcode.

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