Labor Party wins against the odds
AGAINST all predictions, the Labour Party defeated the LberalNational coalition in national elections held on March 13. But Prime Minister Paul Keeting can hardly claim enthusiastic endorsement for his pro-capitalist policies. KEN DAVIS — Melbourne, March 23, 1993 A LTHOUGH still based on the trade union leaderships, the Labor party's policies have become more and more business oriented, leading to a withering of party membership. The left factions within the party have failed to mount any resistance to the government's policies. After 10 years of Labor federal governments unemployment remains over 11%.
Despite the almost unanimous support of the mass media, voters rejected the reactionary strategies and economic rationalism of the Liberals, the traditional party of the Australian bourgeoisie. Although they marginally increased their representation, the election confirmed the decay of the Nationals, a conservative farmers party in permanent coalition with the Liberals.
Working people show no signs of becoming more conservative; indeed there were large swings back to Labor in industrial areas. The unexpected swing to Labor came just days before the ballot, when unprecedented numbers of voters reacted against the threats posed by the Liberals.
Hewson, the leader of the LiberalNational coalition, waged a demagogic and populist campaign, centred around an economic rationalization plan called Fightback!, which attempted to capitalise on the anger generated by mass unemployment. In recent years, unpopular Labor state governments have been voted out in Tasmania, NSW, Victoria and
Western Australia. Only in Queensland does the state Labor government retain some level of popular support.
The Liberal-National coalition campaigned on a platform of restoring employment and prosperity by abolishing taxes on business and creating a 15% Goods and Services Tax to shift the burden to consumers.
The Liberals planned a head-on attack on the union movement. Legislation would outlaw strikes and abolish industrial awards in favour of individual or enterprise contracts with employers. These laws would prevent union defence of penalty rates for night and weekend work, overtime, parental leave, study leave, long service leave, meal breaks and national wage increases. Individual workers could be jailed for breaching enterprise agreements dictated by employers.
The Liberals proposed to cut wages for young workers to A$3 per hour, and threatened to cut off unemployment benefits after nine months. Many unions warned members that under Fightback! they would face an average loss in pay of A$10,000 per year.
While Labor has privatized banks and airlines, the Liberals were planning to hasten the sell-off of public utilities, with the state-owned Telecom communications company, the Australian National (shipping) Line and airports first in line for disposal. They planned a A$10bn cut in public spending and an A$50 million cut for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Labor reintroduced fees for university students, raised subsidies to private and church schools and shifted the cost of onthe-job training from employers to the government. The Liberals pledged to accelerate the privatization and classpolarization of education.
Labor has undermined health expenditure, but the Liberals promised to force 13 million people to pay private health insurance, to pay for consultations with doctors and use profit-making hospitals.
Under Labor, immigration has been cut from 140,00 per year to 80,000 per year. Hundreds of Asian refugees have been imprisoned and deported. The Liberals wanted to bring immigration down to 50,000 per year, prioritizing business migration and cutting family reunion and humanitarian programmes.
The Liberals also pledged a direct attack on land rights and resources for Aboriginal communities and sought to reverse gains made by the environment, women's and lesbian/gay movements.
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Labor is attempting to reposition Australian imperialism within East Asian capital. Labor governments have supported US military interventions, committing troops to the Gulf and Somalia as well as supporting the regional wars pursued by Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. The Liberals pledged to dramatically increase the size of the Australian armed forces, and cut the hardly generous overseas development aid budgets.
In the excitement of its unexpected win, the Labor leader, Paul Keating, pledged a return to "traditional Labor values" and paid homage to the "true believers" who stayed with Labor - industrial workers, women, migrant communities and those active in social justice campaigns.
The re-elected government is promising that the recession is over and that capitalism in Australia is being effectively restructured, though there is no sign that unemployment will decrease. The seventh Accord between the government and union leaderships — a further attempt to guarantee industrial peace while real wages continue to fall - was tentatively announced before the election.
Republican sentiment, linked more to bourgeois nationalism than working class resistance, has been fostered by Keating. In the aftermath of the election even some Liberal leaders are conceding that the current flag with the British Union Jack should be replaced and that the Queen of England should be replaced as head of state by an elected president. *
Weakness of electoral alternatives SMALL party and independent tickets proliferated in this election. With preferential voting for both Houses and proportional representation in the Upper House (Senate), it is easy for Australian voters to specify their support for smaller political formations without endangering their ability to influence the choice of which major party forms the government. However, in this election neither progressive nor reactionary alternative tickets were able to capture the frustration of voters or mount coherent challenges to the two dominant parties. The Greens, who are attempting to establish a functioning nation-wide electoral network fared well, but in many cases lost ground on previous results. The liberal petit bourgeois Democrats, the official third party, lost two thirds of their vote, but retain the balance of power in the Senate. In a working class district of Melbourne an independent candidate, Phil Clary, was re-elected, beating the labor candidate with Liberal preferences. Ruled out of office some months ago on a legal technicality, he has strong support as an articulate campaigner against the reactionary Kennett state government in Victoria and against the anti-working class policies of the federal Labor government. The Democratic Socialist Party (formerly the Socialist Workers Party) ran the only substantial socialist campaign with a total of 15 candidates, almost all women. Some DSP members ran as independents and as Green Alliance or local green candidates. They directed preferences to the mainstream Green tickets unless local Greens were promoting anti-immigration views. In most cases, the DSP also directed preferential votes to the middle class Democrats over Labor. While there were socialist or progressive options in various constituencies, overall there was an absence of a coherent working class political alternative in the electoral arena. No sector of the Labor party, the unions, the Greens or the Democrats waged campaigns posing anti-capitalist solutions to unemployment and poverty. A large number of reactionary formations attempted to capitalise on the alienation of voters from the major parties but their tallies remained marginal. In this election the potential constituencies for fascist, religious and xenophobic campaigns were swept up in the populism of the Liberals' campaign. This does not preclude the possibility that such reactionary outfits might congeal into a more coherent force during the term of the re-elected Keating government. *
Election results
Lower House Electorates Senate (23 seats elected this poll) 1990 1993 1990 1993 Labor 39%/77 seats 45%/80 seats 32 seats 30 seats Liberal 34%/54 seats 36%/49 seats 30 seats 31 seats National 8%/14 seats 7%/16 seats 4 seats 4 seats Independent 6%/2 seats 7%/2 seats Democrat 11%/0 seats 5%/0 seats 8 seats 8 seats Green 1 seat 2 seats Independent/Right 1 seat 1 seat
Scores of small leftwing parties* Lower House Senate no. of electorates average vote no. of tickets average vote Greens 63 4.3% 8 3.3% DSP 14 1.2% 1 0.08% SLL 8 0.6% 0 CL 1 0.2% 1 0.004% IPP 9 0.6% 0 *The DSP (Democratic Socialist Party) publishes the weekly paper Green Left. The IPP (Indigenous Peoples Party) is a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Party in Queensland. The SLL (Socialist Labor League) are former supporters of the British Workers Revolutionary Party; the CL (Communist League) are supporters of the US Socialist Workers Party.
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