Bill Shorten moves to distance Labor from union movement

[MarkB]

In another thread I said that I believe that having strong political parties is essential to a robust democracy that makes better decisions for the citizens and residents of Australia.

As such I hope this is all true.


As reported here.

BILL Shorten is severing century-old ALP ties with the union movement in a parcel of changes he will today insist are needed for Labor to regain government.

The Opposition Leader will declare himself "a proud union member" but will reveal he has directed ALP national secretary George Wright to eliminate rules making a union ticket compulsory for Labor membership.

"This change makes it plain that in 2014 Labor is not the political arm of anything but the Australian people," Mr Shorten plans to say in a speech today.

"Friends, Tony Abbott did not put Labor in Opposition " the Australian people put us here. And unless we change, it is where we will stay.

"Unless we change, we will be forced to watch on as the Liberals undo and unmake everything that modern Australia is, everything that modern Australia can be."

Mr Shorten wants:

* Greater community involvement in selecting candidates with further limits on the party executive to impose choices. He will refer to the debacle in Western Australia in which the top Senate candidate was a former union official who had admitted he didn?t always vote Labor.

* A "membership based party" of 100,000 members; A "one-click online joining model for new members" to replace the current cumbersome application system by June; "Low cost, uniform national membership fees" to attract young people, people on low incomes, students, apprentices and trainees; Make the ALP national conference more representative of community groups.

The most controversial change will be the cutting of 113 years of compulsory links between party and trade union membership. Mr Shorten believes it is a symbolic tie but union colleagues of the former AWU secretary are certain to disagree.

"As a party we can't remain anchored in the past " we need to rise with the modern tide," Mr Shorten will say.

"I believe it should no longer be compulsory for prospective members of the Labor Party to join a union ...


If he does come out and say things like this.

He'll go way up in my estimation of him.

 

[weg]

Mark B you do realise that there's a Royal Commission into union corruption about to commence... and that BS is the man who best represents what the union/Labor Party is all about?

BS would never compromise union power regardless of what he says.

This is nothing but a script that will be used as part of the damage control over the next year - looks better starting now rather than in the middle of a RC.

All that however doesn't change the fact that Labor can't get their act together or work out what it is they believe in.

They have lost their way and don't recognise it.

This imo it's why they've lost a good chunk of their voters. The RC will only serve to destabilise them further.

You might see the start of change but I bet many won't.

 

[Aaron_C]

Without the union base who is going to support the ALP? Do they go to the Left to acquire the Green loonie vote?

 

[Dazz]

I hope this is all true.

I no longer listen to what they say.

I simply observe how they actually voted in Parliament when representing their respective communities on each bill. That cuts through all of the fluff and noise.

At the end of the day though, even if Labor do sort out their massive and ongoing internal squabbling, that doesn't equate to them being able to govern the country competently.

Almost everyone in Australia recognises that Labor are incompetent financial managers, and hardly any of their sitting members have a jot of experience or any demonstrable ability when it comes to running / owning or managing a business.

Protesting and waving banners outside the front gate of a business screaming for higher wages doesn't qualify union officials turned Labor members, as we've all seen, to be in charge of the TRILLION dollar Australian economy.

Even if BS is able to sort out this internal BS, and even if they weed out all of their corrupt union officials, lined up to be the next Labor members, it will never improve their pathetic economic incompetence.

That is the material point.

 

[pully]

well said dazz. plus many will argue that Mr shorten is not the best person to improve labor?
in south Australia many are not happy to face another 4 years of labor. sadly we had the votes but not the seats. stuck with them for now.

 

[Arnoldus]

Almost everyone in Australia recognises that Labor are incompetent financial managers, and hardly any of their sitting members have a jot of experience or any demonstrable ability when it comes to running / owning or managing a business.

There's not a lot to be said about the last Labor gov't. Being old enough to remember how bad things under Fraser & Howard were, and how good in comparison Hawke and Keating were until not long before Hawke was knifed, I can say I've seen good and bad performances from both sides of politics. Unless they can point at some stroke of genius/reform they've implemented, I think in general their performance rises and falls with the tide.

P.S I think Howard did a pretty good job until around the end of his 2nd term, before going on to create a massive system of welfare, entitlements, and recklessly ballooning tax breaks/concessions that haunt us to this day.

 

[datto]

I feel that the ALP will be back in next election. Don't worry about financial mismanagement, union alliance or even corruption etc because the Libs will screw so many ordinary Australians over that they will be thrown out of office in a similar fashion that the Howard govt went.

 

[willair]

In another thread I said that I believe that having strong political parties is essential to a robust democracy that makes better decisions for the citizens and residents of Australia.

As such I hope this is all true.


As reported here.

BILL Shorten is severing century-old ALP ties with the union movement in a parcel of changes he will today insist are needed for Labor to regain government..

What else can he do cut and run from the people that put him there,,

I think Tony Abbott is right on tract to go several terms and fixing up the damaging relations with our Asian neighbours that Labor left him is only the start ..

Plus another problem Labor will now face is Clive-Palmer and some are very good at predicting outcomes by gauging the balance of power..

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-22/palmer-suggests-he-wont-back-direct-action-policy/5402712

 

[The Fence]

I feel that the ALP will be back in next election. Don't worry about financial mismanagement, union alliance or even corruption etc because the Libs will screw so many ordinary Australians over that they will be thrown out of office in a similar fashion that the Howard govt went.

Come on Datto, how about easing off the hysterics.

Screw over...

Do you stick to a budget Datto?
Do you borrow money and spend it willy nilly?

Or do you do the responsible thing and get your financial affairs in order and invest for the future?

 

[MarkB]

Mark B you do realise that there's a Royal Commission into union corruption about to commence

I was not aware if that.

... and that BS is the man who best represents what the union/Labor Party is all about?

Shorten isn't the first, and he won't be the last, lifelong unionite to rise to the top level in the ALP.

BS would never compromise union power regardless of what he says.

I wouldn't be so sure.

You could have said the same thing about Bob Hawke when he was elected in 1983. And then he bought in the Accord which, it could be argued, surreptitiously took a lot of power away from the unions. And it saw real wages fall too.

That's not to mention the work that he and Keating put into a very aggressive microeconomic reform agenda (tariffs & subsidies cut, privatisations, etc).

Not the sort of thing union types tend to do, is it?

The question is now whether they can reform themselves.

I think they can. I think it will take time. Blood will be spilled. Egos smashed. Heads will roll. And they might find themselves warming the opposition benches for a few years.

But I'd never write them off completely like some of you seem prepared to do.

I feel that the ALP will be back in next election. Don't worry about financial mismanagement, union alliance or even corruption etc because the Libs will screw so many ordinary Australians over that they will be thrown out of office in a similar fashion that the Howard govt went.

Australia just doesn't do one-term federal governments.

Even Gough got re-elected in 1974.

...the Libs will screw so many ordinary Australians over that they will be thrown out of office in a similar fashion that the Howard govt went.

I don't think Howard's problem was screwing people over. Imo they got stale. 4 terms / 11 years -> they started to run out of ideas.

I personally believe that if Howard had the good sense to stand down 1/2 way through his last term and given the Australian public time to warm to Peter Costello as a PM, that we may never have experienced the utter fiasco that was Kevin Rudd.

I no longer listen to what they say.

You're a liberal party member, aren't you?

(If so, why would you listen to what they have to say. Lib/Nat members believe the earth is flat when it comes to what ALP people say).

Almost everyone in Australia recognises that Labor are incompetent financial managers

They do have that reputation - it dates back to the 1980's of course.

It is a tad harsh though. (I have not always thought this way, but with some hindsight I now think it is a bit harsh, not entirely unjustified, but a bit harsh for the following reasons).

A lot of people point to the public debt that Hawke and Keating left behind. Almost $96bn by the time they lost power in 1996.

However it is also true that almost $40bn of that debt was Lib/Nat legacy debt from the Fraser Government (And who was Fraser's Treasurer for the last 5 years or so? John Winston Howard).

So, $56bn or so was genuine ALP (Hawke / Keating) debt.

Anyway, to pay that $96bn in debt off, Howard and Costello sold $72bn or so in Government assets. It was not all good budgeting. Most of it was asset sales.

And also, to give due credit to Hawke and Keating - they inherited an economy struggling from the effects of a recession - and then they dug the economic hole a little deeper by reforming the economy - which of course exacerbated the effects of the "recession we had to have" in the early 1990's.

But by the time Howard and Costello came on board in 1996 the economy, now structurally reformed and growing, was primed to be milked and ready to take on the world.

And - they (Hawke/Keating) also introduced CPI targeting for the RBA. It's been great for us for almost 25 years now.

They also deregulated the banking and financial sector (the Campbell Inquiry, that Fraser was not game to implement).

So yeah, if you want to throw rocks at the ALPs financial management.

But also throw some roses their way too - because Howard actually inherited a reasonably strong economy - and at least a part of Howard's economic legacy is attributable to the ALP*.

(*And if you want to use the GST as a great example of Howard's legacy, remember that to get it implemented required that the states and territory governments had to agree too - at the time most of them were ALP governments).

.. and hardly any of their sitting members have a jot of experience or any demonstrable ability when it comes to running / owning or managing a business.

I admit, that is a problem.

 

[MarkB]

And - they (Hawke/Keating) also introduced CPI targeting for the RBA. It's been great for us for almost 25 years now.

To be fair (since I actually dislike all political parties equally) - I should note that while CPI targeting has been good for the economy (imo) - what happened before that was reprehensible.

John Edwards (at one point Chief Economist at HSBC) wrote Paul Keating's Biography (Edwards used to be Keating's economics adviser) - in it there are some fascinating insights into economic management during Keatings term as Treasurer (1983-1991).

Like this little gem. The book acknowledges (it actually names names) that certain people in Treasury and Keating himself were of the opinion that for interest rates to be falling in time for a particular federal election - they first had to rise (to about 17%).

Interestingly, the book acknowledges that the RBA Governor of the time (Fraser) was happy with this arrangement (Fraser was appointed by Keating, first as Secretary to the Treasury, and then as Governor of the RBA).

But at least one senior RBA official - an Assistant Governor by the name of Ian McFarlane (remember him?) was not. He was of the opinion that rates should fall immediately.

 

[weg]

I was not aware if that.



Shorten isn't the first, and he won't be the last, lifelong unionite to rise to the top level in the ALP.



I wouldn't be so sure.

BS entered politics in 2007 and has already had a hand in the removal of 2 PM's.

So how many other 'lifelong unionites' in the party have been given that power?

He is not in the position by accident and he's definitely not there because he is a super talented in any way. He's there because it suited the union to have him there.

If you think BS can water down union power just like that then you've completely misunderstood how the Labor Party and unions work.

Power is not given to you because they like you. It's given with strings attached.

This would be nothing more than a smokescreen...if they did anything at all it would be to make it appear that union power and influence had been watered down.

 

[MarkB]

BS entered politics in 2007 and has already had a hand in the removal of 2 PM's.

So how many other 'lifelong unionites' in the party have been given that power?

He's removed 2 party leaders.

They just happened to both be PM at the time.
(Yes it is unusual to roll a PM and it has not happened since McMahon rolled Gorton, and even then Gorton could have stayed on but opted to step down. Happens a lot more in opposition - I guess because when you're losing it tends to be more natural to ***** at each other than when you're actually in Government).

BS is a factional leader. That's what they do. That's what Richo did to Hawke in 1991 because he was pissed at not getting the portfolio he wanted.

Spills in politics are as old as politics itself.

If you think BS can water down union power just like that then you've completely misunderstood how the Labor Party and unions work. Power is not given to you because they like you. It's given with strings attached.

And a fat lot of good it will do them (the unions) if the ALP remain in opposition.

And since most people here think the ALP is dead in the water because of their ideological confusion and the tail (the unions) that wags the dog, what alternative do they have but to reform?

 

[Arnoldus]

This would be nothing more than a smokescreen...if they did anything at all it would be to make it appear that union power and influence had been watered down.

Yeah I get the feeling it wont amount to much more than tokenism. You'll know real reform is being pushed through if/when the unions start trashing Bill Shorten and the party's reputation in retaliation. The Labor party will be much better off without folks like Joe De Bruyn (SDA Secretary) and the influence he peddles.

 

[The Fence]

This would be nothing more than a smokescreen...if they did anything at all it would be to make it appear that union power and influence had been watered down.

Spot on weg.

So if BS is (on the face of it) watering down unions, does that make him a scab ?

 

[Tony3008]

I'm wondering if I'm going to see a replay of my last 30 years in the the UK: Labour was swept from office in 1979 following endless strikes ('the winter of discontent') by Mrs Thatcher, her majority 43, then made a disastrous choice of new Leader, the left-wing Michael Foot - a case of the party choosing the leader they liked, not the one that would appeal to the public at large, floating voters in particular.

At the 1983 election (post Falkland war) Mrs T. was returned again, with a majority of 144. 14 years later Labour, under Tony Blair, was back in office with a majority of 179. In the meantime, largely due to the leadership (1983-92) of Neil Kinnock, the party reinvented itself, largely severing its union links and extreme left wing influence. But it was a pretty messy transition.

 

[datto]

Come on Datto, how about easing off the hysterics.

Screw over...

Hysterics is necessary. This is important

Do you stick to a budget Datto?

Yes, Fence. But not to anyone's detriment.

Do you borrow money and spend it willy nilly?

No, Fence. Things like my health, education and well being are very important and are not considered wasted money. The same should apply to ordinary Ozzies.

Or do you do the responsible thing and get your financial affairs in order and invest for the future?

Yes, Fence. That's what investing in property is all about - abetter future.

I don't cry poor and take food from peoples' mouth. Then in virtually the same breath spend 12b on second rate fighter jets.

 

[Dazz]

I see there are still a few folks who can't / won't accept the decision that the majority of Australian adults supported on 7th of Sept 2013.

90 to 55 is not even close. Deal with it.

 

[datto]

There is a saying : " eat 5#!+, 10 billion flies can't be wrong"

I think the same applies to politics.

Anyway, if voters are happy with what they got, good luck to them.

 

[The Fence]

Maybe put a little sugar on Datto.

You'll be right mate, fore you can look after yourself.

Oh, and the moment I saw last nights headlines on ABC I just knew someone would take the bait about fighter jets and a tough budget.