Speech given at the closing plenary session of the Now We The People conference, 24.8.03 University of Technology, Sydney

Anthony Albanese, MHR

In the brief time available to us, firstly I want to speak about challenges and opportunities. Opportunities, because I think often in the Left, we talk ourselves down a bit, and one of the great thing about a conference like this is you see the broad range of activists involved in movements right across society who are making a contribution. There are many things which are positive. I think the fact that there was such a broad movement in opposition to the war against Iraq; the fact that the Labor Party, not by ourselves, not by ourselves, but as a political party which responds to pressure, actually opposed for the first time - from the beginning, unlike the Gulf War or the Vietnam War or any of the previous interventions - actually opposed US policy, was a significant breakthrough, for which I don't suggest just people in the Labor Party deserve credit. I think there was a great movement outside that placed pressure on it.

The breakthrough on issues such as the environment, gender issues, sexuality issues, which used to be pretty tough and hard, but which are now mainstream. The fact that you had the age of consent changed this year in NSW without society breaking down, without a great crisis, is a significant step forward, that indeed the way that we relate to each other means that there is great progress.

And as much as we might be cynical about the reason for the response, the fact that Howard, yesterday, announced a bucketload of money to save the Murray river, is something that was not a mainstream issue, it was on the fringe of politics in the last decade, is not any more.

The fact that post the Cold War, alliances are possible that we couldn't have foreseen before. Laurie Brereton, standing on a platform with Bob Brown, speaking about the need for peace and justice, is something that isn't because of a change in his political view. It's because no longer was it about picking sides between the US and the Soviet Union, and essentially that block that was there, and if you take as someone who was brought up a Catholic (sorry Ann, but not quite there these days, in terms of my beliefs) but as an atheist, the fact that the Catholic social justice position is not that far removed at all, let alone the Uniting Church position which is way up there, to a mainstream left position on social justice issues.

Rev Ann Wansbrough interjects: We had it first!

Albanese continues: Absolutely. You were a mile ahead, and in terms of challenges, there are challenges however. I think one of the faults of the left is we analyse things in terms as we'd like them to be rather than as we are. I'm sorry to disagree, Rod, John Howard is not an illegitimate government, people voted for him. And if we don't accept that, if we don't accept that a majority of Australians would today, no matter what political system you like, fifty per cent plus, would vote for John Howard, that is the reality of Australia in 2003. And one of the weaknesses of the left is that we need to make sure that we don't define society as just us. That the fact is there are a whole lot of people who are disengaged from society, who aren't attending conferences, who don't read the Herald, who don't listen to the ABC. And they're people whose views are just as legitimate as ours. And we need to analyse that and have respect and have tolerance for those views. The Left are becoming older, as a group, all of us. We are more and more coming from inner suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and we need to have a bit of self-analysis here as well, if we are going to seek to truly represent, truly represent, social change and move forward.

For example on asylum-seekers, my view is very clear, in terms of I don't support mandatory detention, I support the views which I'm sure the people in this room would have a common one on. But unless we actually acknowledge that there are some people who actually don't like asylum-seekers, not just John Howard, then we won't be able to move forward.

So I think there are some issues as well which provide possibilities for cooperation. The whole free trade - fair trade issue, the issues of privatisation, the issues of quality of life, put in simple terms, in terms of work practices. The whole issue that one of the reason that people are disengaged from the political system is that they don't have the time to do it. They're too busy putting food on the table for their families. And that's why issues such as maternity leave - and paternity leave - issues of ours of work, the sort of response and leadership we've seen from the ACTU on these issues this week, provide very much a way forward. We need to address issues of security. It's not good enough for us to say that issues of terrorism don't exist or it's a beat-up, because people who we seek to represent, particularly in class terms, do think it's very real. But we need to expand that debate into an issue of economic security: are you secure in your job? The whole casualisation of work. Are you secure in where you live? In terms of the whole issue in what's happening in housing affordability, in places like Sydney and Melbourne etc. By engaging in those issues we have opportunities.

I'll conclude by saying perhaps how. How can we move those issues forward. The first is to have respect and tolerance for each other's views. Socialism is nothing and as a socialist it's not really to me about commanding the heights of the economy, it's about having hope and faith in humankind, and that people progress with each generation. And I think we need to take that positive response forward.

The ACTU, an engagement with the trade union movement seems to me essential. The trade union movement is the basis of people's experience on a day to day level and it also is engaged in much broader issues, and has shown an ability, through the ACTU and most remarkably, in terms of my earlier comments, the NSW Labor Council is playing a progressive role in terms of coalitions such as I the peace movement. And we need to engage and accept that.

Finally, organizations such as SEARCH, this conference in itself. We need to find organisational structures which enable us to come together without having just a sort of banner on them without engaging in "The ALP thinks this, or the Greens think that, or the Democrats think that". We need to actually be prepared also, I think there's a challenge of all of us, to put down our own electoral considerations. To acknowledge there's a big difference between the role the Communist Party played in this country, a progressive role, because it wasn't an electoral vehicle. That's why you could have Tribune every week, that's why you could have the sort of leadership that people involved in the CPA had across a range of social movements.

The fact is that the Labor Party is an electoral vehicle, and so are the Greens and the Dems. And the best example you can have of that perhaps, which is disappointing - and which we all deserve criticism of - was the peace rally, where people were going along and having Greens banners and ALP banners in response and et cetera, and trying to claim ownership, for electoral purposes, of that movement, which we all engaged in. We need to acknowledge that that happened, put that down, and acknowledge that if we are going to have unity and move forward, we need as much as possible to seize opportunities where we can have that broad coalition of interests. And I'm certainly positive that we can do that into the future. Thank you.


Anthony Albanese MHR is the ALP Federal Member for Grayndler and the Shadow Minister for Employment Services and Training

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