rorting the democratic processes

Now more than ever a third party may be needed in this country as there isn't much choice if we voters look for change to Labor. Listen to the insiders from the Labor Party

O'Connor to run Indep
Updated: 05:58, Friday October 19, 2007
Mr O'Connor lost pre-selection to a senior union official and he didn't mince words when asked why he was switching sides.

He blamed, 'Rampant branch-stacking, rorting of the democratic processes, illicit fundraising, money laundering, and grubby back-room political deals by Labor right-wing factional operatives.'

http://www2.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=195442

10 Reasons Why Young Idealistic People Should Forget About Organised Politics
Public Lecture by Mark Latham at the University of Melbourne,
27 September 2005

Number Four: The Rise of Machine Politics
A recurring theme in my diaries is the corrosive impact of machine politics on the ALP. This is a key point for young people to understand: in becoming politically active today, you would not be joining a political party (in the conventional sense) but a political machine—an oligarchy dominated by opportunism, careerism and acts of bastardry. This is the unhappy story of Labor’s culture over the past twenty years.

As Labor’s real membership declined, it was relatively easy for a handful of factional powerbrokers to grab hold of the Party in the 1980s. They had the resources of head office and the trade unions to back them and met little resistance from the so-called rank-and-file membership (which had been gutted by ethnic branch stacking). This was a takeover hostile to democratic principles: they stripped the remaining assets of the Party, turning ALP conferences and policy committees into hand-picked, stage-managed jokes.

A few dozen Party officials and faction bosses now effectively control the organisation: who goes into Parliament, how MPs vote in Caucus and how decisions are made in national and State Party forums. Very few people progress without their say so: through Young Labor, into trade union and State ministerial offices, recruited for future factional and parliamentary service. It’s a dense network of influence—full of favours, patronage and, if anyone falls out with them, payback.

You need to be brave and carefree to stand up to them, breaking the code of silence by which machine politics operates. That’s what my diaries have done. Politicians who write books after they leave parliament usually offer sanitised versions to the public. They are still on the gravy train, hoping to benefit from the system’s largesse.

In my case, I have no desire to be the Ambassador to Spain or Head of the Water Board, so I can speak freely and give an honest account of events. The system doesn’t like it, of course, as it threatens the status and power of a generation of machine politicians, hangers-on and media pretenders. But I say that’s a good thing. I walked outside the system and believe the public has got the right to know what goes on inside it.

Many senior Labor people privately agree with my analysis of the Party, but are too scared to speak openly for fear of retribution. Let me give some examples:

In January, Jennie George, the Member for Throsby and former ACTU President, wrote to me, saying that, ‘Politics is a brutal business. I thought the union movement was tough, but this was no comparison to the internal dysfunctional culture of the ALP’. Brutal and dysfunctional—apt descriptions of the way in which the Labor movement operates.
In February, Barry Jones, the ALP National President, wrote to me as follows: ‘The major problems in the Party are systemic, essentially caused by the stranglehold on recruitment by the factions, which remain as cancerous as they were when Hawke and Wran used that term in their 2002 review’. Two more apt descriptions—‘systemic’ and ‘cancerous’.
Two weeks ago, a Federal MP from Victoria wrote that, ‘I hope the sensible things you have to say about the state of the Party are not subsumed in an orgy of banal trivia whipped up by the media, as it is indeed in a parlous state, particularly in Victoria’. A sharp analysis and prophecy.
Last week, a Federal MP from one of the smaller States emailed me as follows: ‘I actually feel positive about what I have read so far (in your book) and in the longer term, you may have given the Labor Party a last gasp at reforming itself before we go the way of the British Liberals in the 1920s’.
And just yesterday, another email, from a Labor frontbencher: ‘Congratulations on the book. If anything it is mild, compared to what goes on inside the Party … In particular, we need to do something about the number of union hacks winning pre-selection for the Senate. This just adds to the stultifying impact of the factions’.
While it is sad to see Australian Labor degenerate so badly, this issue also needs to be understood in its broader context. Political scientists have identified machine politics as a persistent problem for social democratic parties.

Fifty years ago, in his book Political Parties, Robert Michels argued that prominent Left-wing movements inevitably fall under the influence of paid officials and apparatchiks, men more committed to the bureaucratic control and administration of the party than the radical transformation of society.

The party machine offers its own rewards, in the form of careerism and enhanced social status. Over time, these benefits become an end in their own right. Idealism and ideology are superseded by the internal contest and maintenance of power—an intractable problem.

My experience inside the ALP replicates the Michels model. As the diaries show, I thought about these issues for nearly a decade but was never able to find a feasible solution. Others might have more success in the future, but my conclusions then, as now, are overwhelmingly pessimistic. I cannot see a way of overcoming the machine men and their influence.

Number Five: The Politics of Personal Destruction (Labor-style)
As the factions have taken control of the ALP, they have perverted its political methods. Dissidents and independent thinkers have been systematically attacked and marginalised by the party bosses. What the powerbrokers cannot control, they will destroy. And they are not too fussy about how this might be achieved. It has produced a culture that Graham Richardson brazenly popularised as ‘whatever it takes’.

Nothing is off limits. Personal matters are seen as fair game and are frequently used to hound the vulnerable into submission. This is now the ruling culture inside the Labor Caucus, with the many factional and sub-factional chiefs spending all day on the phone, gossiping, plotting and spreading rumours about their so-called colleagues. It is the politics of personal destruction.

My diaries detail the tragic impact of this culture on Greg Wilton. Five years after Greg’s death, it was time for the truth to be told. The immediate response of the Canberra Club was instructive: they went into denial, with the media insisting that if Kim Beazley had cried about Greg’s death in the parliamentary condolence motion then surely, as Leader of the ALP, he would have contacted and comforted Greg behind the scenes. Greg’s sister, Leeanda Wilton, has confirmed the truth of this matter and highlighted the burning paradox about Beazley: an impression of public decency, offset by the private reality of indecency.

I have no doubt that, over time, people will also come forward and confirm the nature of his personal smear against me. Notwithstanding the threats and intimidation of the ALP machine men, too many people know about this matter for it to be kept inside the Party.

For instance, after his conversation with Beazley’s campaign manager, Robert Ray, in late 2003, John Murphy was so disturbed by what he had heard that he sought reassurance about my character from two senior Caucus members. I have spoken to both of them and there is no way in the world Murphy was worried about my record on Liverpool Council, as he is now claiming. The matter concerned a sexual harassment smear against me.

Again, it has been instructive to watch the media reporting of this issue. It reveals the self-centred, know-all nature of so many journalists, believing that if they did not see or hear something in Canberra, it could not have happened. I cite three examples:

In the Sydney Morning Herald on 3 September, David Marr wrote that, ‘The allegations swirling round Mark Latham at the last election—sexual harassment (etc)—were not being leaked to the press by his very many enemies in Labor ranks. They were pushing other complaints but not these’.
In The Australian last Saturday, a Sussex Street press secretary, Brad Norington, wrote that, ‘No complaint was pursued, no dirt file kept and the (sexual harassment) issue lapsed (in 1998)’.
Two Saturdays ago in the same newspaper, Matt Price wrote that, ‘Perhaps I move in the wrong circles but not once did I hear any scuttlebutt about Latham’s personal life from colleagues, opponents or anyone else’.
Have no doubt, one of the circles Matt Price has moved in for many years is Annabel Crabb’s—in fact, few journalists in Canberra are closer friends. Marr, Norington and Price look silly, however, when one reads Crabb’s assessment of the sexual harassment smear, emailed to me in March:
This was, for years, quite a persistent rumour among Labor people. I should say I heard the rumour a few times over the years but only ever from Labor people, and usually as part of a colourful diatribe against the Latham character from known detractors.

It will be interesting to see how Crabb deals with this matter in her forthcoming book on Labor in Opposition. Better still, when she launches the book later this week, Crabb should identify the ‘Labor people’ involved.

In practice, the politics of personal destruction, in all its sickness and perversion, is now a regular part of the Canberra culture. The only rational, effective way of dealing with it is to avoid it like the plague.

http://www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/publicity/lathamlecture.html