nsw politics
26 Sep 2008
Whacking the Labor Party
Development scandals, Underpants Guy and a strong swing towards the Greens: things are looking dire for Labor in NSW. ALP candidate for Lord Mayor of Sydney, Meredith Burgmann, gets the message - and reflects on where to from here
As expected, the Labor Party did extremely badly in the NSW local Government elections on 13 September. They polled particularly poorly in the inner city of Sydney. This area, which comprises five state seats, is socially progressive, yuppy and increasingly prosperous. Solid base Labor voters, public housing tenants and ethnic communities are being squeezed out as gentrification takes over.
The Labor Party lost the majority of its votes to the Greens and left-leaning Independents. However, premature backslapping by the Greens in anticipation of the holy grail of lower house parliamentary seats is still premature.
It is very clear that the educated, informed and picky voters of the inner city make great distinctions when they cast their vote. The voters wanted to whack the Labor Party and they had their baseball bats ready. The council elections were quite clearly a referendum on the performance of the state Labor Government.
There could not have been a worse week for the election to have taken place. The state Government appeared to be in meltdown losing the Premier, Deputy Premier, Treasurer and several senior ministers in lightning succession in the week prior to the election. Then, two days before polling day, it was revealed that the new Police Minister had cavorted in green speedos on a couch in his Parliamentary office.
"Underpants guy", as he is now known, probably cost the Labor teams that extra percentage that would have got many of them over the line. For instance, in the City of Sydney, the Labor pre-poll vote in the two weeks before election day was 8 per cent higher than its vote on the day itself.
In the City of Sydney, which comprises 22 suburbs, another interesting statistic was that I as the Lord Mayoral candidate polled much stronger than the Labor team as a whole. I outpolled the Green candidate by 15 per cent whereas the Greens as a party outpolled us by a similar amount. Our voters were happy to vote for me as a long-time lefty and anti-developer activist but could not bring themselves to put pen to paper for a team simply shown as "Labor". This illustrates the electorate's ability to make distinctions between individuals and the party and does not bode well for future forays by the Greens into Labor heartland.
Choosing good candidates is a problem for the Greens. Although Labor as a brand is on the nose, Labor individuals can still be widely popular and voted for in the inner city. It is an extremely informed electorate, the "chatterati" is in fact a good description.
The individual performance is important and therefore the two state seats most at threat from a Greens or left Independent challenge are unlikely to fall. The two sitting Labor members are widely respected and now very senior in the Labor leadership.
Carmel Tebbutt the Member for Marrickville is the Deputy Premier and Verity Firth the Member for Balmain is the Minister for Education. Both have strong left wing credentials and good local support. Two years is a long time in politics and those issues which were most raised by voters as we doorknocked the city area may well have faded into the background by the time the next state election in March 2011 comes around.
The latest shift against Labor in the inner city began when the Planning Minister Frank Sartor, pushed by Iemma, started to "reform" the planning laws. With no political skills of persuasion or negotiation, Sartor was simply perceived as corrupt by the public and quickly became a whipping boy for the media.
This underlying uneasiness about the ALP and developers was further nurtured in February when the Wollongong scandal hit the headlines. Wollongong Councillors, some of them Labor, were found to have corruptly supported developments which were quite clearly contrary to planning guidelines.
Thus the ever-present inner city fear that if you voted Labor you would get a ten storey block of flats next door now seemed even more real. Lord Mayor Clover Moore and the Greens were adept at pushing this perception helped by an increasingly anti-Labor media.
More subliminal but also important was the view that the blokey "tribal" culture of the Right faction of the Labor Party had got out of hand. The fact that Labor now has a Left wing leadership and many senior women in charge will help in the long run but in the short term it made no difference.
The Greens are beginning to experience the problems that come with a maturing party and an increased number of elected representatives. While they previously took upon themselves the easy role of oppositionists, they are now in the position of having to make decisions. Previously they have shown that they are not immune from making pragmatic deals, even with the Liberals, in order to gain office. The more they act like a political party the more they will be seen as similar to the despised Labor Party.
One of the problems the Greens have had is the inability to attract and preselect quality candidates. There are many occasions when the Labor Party has breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing which candidate has been chosen by the Greens. The Greens work on a strict numbers-based preselection process which as the Labor Party has discovered does not always turn up the best candidate. Those that are good at numbers games are rewarded.
It will be interesting to see if the new Left Rees/Tebbutt leadership can turn around the fortunes of the Labor party and hold the expected swing against a 16-year-old Government to a respectable 4 or 5 per cent. If that can be achieved and Firth and Tebbutt run strong personality-based campaigns, the ALP will keep their inner city seats.
For the Rees/Tebbutt leadership to get the breathing space to make the policy changes to which they are committed, important decisions need to be made by the Party. They must immediately move to ban developer donations to political parties and they must wipe out that blokey tribalistic culture typified by Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid.
If this does not happen our longsuffering loyal inner city voters will never return to us.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Newsvine
Facebook
Kwoff
Discuss this article
To participate in the discussion Sign in or Register
While clearly identifying some potential problems for the Greens and being dismisive of a whole swath of thinking voters as "chatterati" what this article glosses over is the systemic problems of the ALP in NSW. More and more voters are refusing to endorse corruption and wholesale selling out of core working class principles. While there may be some lingering respect for long term activists like Meredith, Carmel etc the real test is whether that respect stands up against the long term political patterns which saw these ‘activists’ vote for privitisation of the state’s electricity resources appoint Sartor as planning minister, vote to hand development decisions into the hands of that same minister, allow Tropodi to remain, oversee the rundown of public transport, education and health to secure a AAA rating etc etc etc. Sorry my patience ended when the ALP colluded over the Tampa legislation. Once I was proud to say that I was once arrested alongside meridith bergman. Now Im just saddened that such a heroic activist continues to provide cover for a corrupt and incompentent political party.
Funnally maybe the problem for the Greens finding quality candidtates (if this is a real problem) would be for committed activists to take a stand on the issues that they pupport to still believe in and to resign from the ALP and join the Greens.
Interesting article that has been written by Meredith Burgmann from the ALP left if there is such a thing left. I mean the major parties are so much similar its hard to tell them apart. Last night Malcolm Turnbull was on QANDA on ABC he could have been someone from the ALP being interviewed.
As for The ALP being worried about Inner Sydney seats being lost to the Greens. I think its so obvious isnt it? Behave in parliament. Focus on policy of what the voters are paying you to do and dont get embroiled in developer donations like the ALP currently is. Its a no brainer. This article also shows that the ALP has totally lost touch with its foundations and its support base in Australia. I would suggest to Meredith Burgmann instead of wasting her time in a party that has "lost touch and is out to lunch". She should join a more progressive party like the Australian Greens who are getting on with the job with no "big end of town" funding like her own party is getting.
I should make an admission up front - I’m a Greens member.
But having said that, this really doesn’t sound like Meredith has heard much of a message at all. Essentially her argument is that the council results were an aberration based on a bad week in state parliament, and in any case, Labor has popular local members at State level so their seats aren’t really in danger.
Meredith cites her relatively higher Lord Mayoral vote as evidence of this - people still voted for her (with strong left and community credentials) but not Labor (a tarnished brand).
The problem with this story is it’s not true. More people voted for Labor in Council than for Meredith for Lord Mayor (as you can see here http://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/result.aspx?areaname=sydney).
Labor’s vote didn’t change much between Mayor and Council - the Greens vote did. This was because Clover voters changed their vote to Green in Council - it had nothing to do with Labor or Meredith.
This reflects the deliberate campaign by the Greens to focus on Council where we are more likely to win seats.
So there’s actually no evidence of any personal vote for Meredith - something I was a little surprised by.
Also, this isn’t a NSW phenomenon - there were large swings to the Greens in WA and the NT, and in the Mayo bye-election. In WA and NT the swing to the Greens was similar to the swing to the Coalition. The swing from Labor to the Greens is about a much wider problem than a bad week in parliament.
Finally, do I actually understand Meredith correctly when she argues that the strength of Labor’s preselection process is that it doesn’t allow a direct one-vote, one-value ballot of local members?
Is Meredith really endorsing Labor’s practice of head office over-ruling Labor’s local branches, by imposing candidates without having a rank-and-file ballot?
That "strict numbers-based preselection process" she refers to is what most people call democracy.
Interesting article from Meredith; I appreciate it. I don’t live in her seat, but if I did, I’d probably have voted her Mayor too.
I find myself a little confused about the inner-city popularism over "development" espoused by both Labor and the Greens, though. In my view, urban sprawl is one of Sydney’s biggest problems: it causes car reliance, isolation, and with those, increased carbon emissions and, arguably, a lower quality of life.
Indeed, the most appealing thing about living in inner-Sydney - the City of Sydney, Marrickville and Leichhardt council areas - is its high density. It’s walkable and easy to get aroumd, with loads of services. What is this, if not development?
This analysis is useful if it can be regarded as sincere.
Politicians have long regarded voters as morons, and Ms Burgmann in this article seems disposed to continue this tradition. The following quotes are perfectly insulting.
"Thus the ever-present inner city fear that if you voted Labor you would get a ten storey block of flats next door"
"This illustrates the electorate’s ability to make distinctions between individuals and the party"
"It is very clear that the educated, informed and picky voters of the inner city make great distinctions when they cast their vote."
"With no political skills of persuasion or negotiation, Sartor was simply perceived as corrupt "
Norman Thompson
There are so many points I would like to discuss in relation to Burgmann’s article that my post could become so long most people wouldn’t want to wade through it. So I will limit myself to writing about the pre-selection methods of the Greens and the quality of our candidates.
The selection of Greens candidates is totally democratic unlike the method used for many Labor candidates (such as the notorious N40 in which head office parachutes people into the position without any input from local ALP members) and the selection of candidates for the Clover Moore Party. Unless things changed drastically in the last months before the Sydney Council election, the Moore Party had only one person "voting" on who would their candidates – Clover Moore.
In sharp contrast all Greens candidates from federal and state seats to local council positions are chosen by active Greens members. Individuals wanting to stand as Greens candidates present at a number of forums so party members can access their abilities and worthiness to represent the Greens in the elections. All candidates are then chosen by the rank and file of the party.
I believe the quality of Greens candidates is excellent. For example, the Greens candidate for Lord Mayor of Sydney in 2004 and 2008, Chris Harris, has done more positive and constructive work for our local community over the past four and a half years than any other Sydney councillor.
I have worked closely with the four NSW upper house MPs over the past six years, especially Lee Rhiannon, and I find them to be intelligent, compassionate, hardworking and heads and shoulders above many of the MPs from the major parties. If all NSW MPs were of the calibre of the four Greens our state would not be in the mess it is today.
If Labor hopes to recover it needs to look to the Greens for examples of how to make itself more relevant to the people of NSW. To begin with, Labor needs to pay attention to its rank and file members.
Yes, I agree also that the Greens and Independents have made great inroads into the political landscape and more power to them!!!!!
I’m very happy to vote Green or Independent in all elections these days. There’s always someone who’s fair dinkum.
The major parties have that attitude that they’d be better off if the rank and file would go away and leave it to the bosses.
I think both parties have wrecked the NSW Public Service through their blinkered arrogance. This is why the state is run so badly. Also, an emphasis on "competition" instead of cooperation(Thankyou Mr. Hayek and Margaret Thatcher). The Labor Party members seem to have an over developed sense of entightlement, giving jobs to one another. Another thing, who does Joe Tripodi think he is?
"There are many occasions when the Labor Party has breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing which candidate has been chosen by the Greens."
I found this comment particularly ironic - look at quality candidates chosen by Labor such as George Newhouse for example… but it makes me wonder who Dr Burgmann is referring to specifically. Perhaps it’s just a nasty backhander at people she was unable to best in the contest that counts.
Meredith certainly has a great record as an activist for human rights and she was a strong supporter of the BLF campaigns that imposed Green Bans to save the heritage of the Rocks. Out of those campaigns came the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979) which was a very progressive piece of legislation that allowed the community to have a say in what was going on in their backyard. All power to the Wran Government that introduced it.
Now fast forward to 2008 and we have a government that is bursting at the seams with millions of dollars of donations that have been extracted from developers, the hotel industry and other corporate donors who want the ear of a minister. In many cases these ministers are career politicians who have trodden the path of student political activist, adviser to a member of parliament followed by preselection or N40 placement into a Labor seat. These people specialise in stacking branches, counting numbers, spin and winning preselections and running election campaigns.
A political philosophy does not seem to matter and it seems that any policy can be jettisoned for political expediency. As one of the previous commentators pointed out Tampa is a great example of this.
Look at what has happened to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act - it has been gutted to give the Planning Minister sweeping discretion to approve "mate" significant development and the voice of the community has been swept aside.
Look at the disgraceful performance of Labor politicians who ignored their own party policy and an overwhelming directive of the 2008 State Party Conference and pushed ahead to privatise the electricity industry.
Meredith seems to think that the local popularity of individuals will save the day for Labor at the next election. No doubt they are fine and capable women but they still put their hand up and vote for legislation that is contrary to what their party policy says.
In NSW, Greens politicians and councillors are bound by Greens policy. It is all on the Greens website for the world to see. Voters can be sure that if they elect a Green as their representative they will have someone that will vote in accordance with that policy.
Earlier this year I introduced a motion at the City of Sydney to send a message to the premier that the City Council opposed the privatisation of electricity. After I finished my introductory remarks I called on a seconder for the motion so that the matter could be debated. Not one Labor councillor was willing to even second the motion so that we could have a discussion. The motion lapsed and the meeting moved on. Not one of the three Labor councillors was game to cross their Macquarie St masters who were busy selling out their own party members.
I’d respectfully suggest Meredith that this loss of principle is the reason that voters deserted your beloved party on 13th September. What does Labor really stand for?
I’d also suggest that unless some of your former colleagues grow some backbone and demonstrate some courage to defend what your followers think are Labor principles they will stay away at the next state election as well.
Chris Harris
Greens Councillor
City of Sydney
Meredith, you’ve studied and written plenty on Australian political science and political history over the years. Surely you can see that what’s happening to inner-city Labor has its echoes in history.
Early in the 20th century, working-class areas were represented by wealthy liberals. Local members would represent themselves as "friends of the working man", not always disingenuously: many had significant achievements in delivering for these communities despite the fact that they came from, and often lived in, wealthier comunities that elected their more conservative colleagues. The rising Labor Party knocked off these well-meaning people, reasoning that a representative from the working class was better than a representative merely sympathetic to it. You can imagine the horror of old-style liberals at being challenged by people like J C Watson and Billy Hughes.
Today the Greens and Moore-like independents are supplanting Labor in the inner city, slowly but surely. You can be catty about them if you like, and mock their bumbling and naivete, but you can’t deny that the long term is against Labor. However well you did (even in your own mind), you’re no Pat Hills and shouldn’t be expected to be. When Nathan Rees talks about being a Westie, he’s not talking about Glebe or even Newtown, but Toongabbie and beyond. Labor victories in the inner-city over coming years will have to be redefined downwards ("we got a councillor!"), a pleasant surprise that happens only when a statewide/national pro-Labor swing is on.
I was fascinated by your use of a term like "chatterati", a term that belongs to right-wing writers like Andrew Bolt or Michael Duffy. Mind you, the right-wing is so full of old lefties (e.g. McGuinness in his day, Windschuttle, Michael Costa) it is not surprising that they would bring aspects of their mindset with them. Lenin used to regard urban lefties as "useful idiots", and it’s understandable that you’d scorn idiots who are no longer useful to you.
What’s difficult, and what confirms the thesis of Labor inner-city decline, is how to get people to vote for you even when you think they’re idiots. Give careful thought as to why you’d want to represent people you regard as idiots.
I think the above articles are right on the money in relation to Meredith Burgmanns article and I think she most likely knows the Greens are right in what they say and do basically. She really feels like she has to go down with the titanic and attack on the way down. As others have written above you only have to look at history and what was like to what it is like today. It has moved so much to the right and made itself indistinguishable from the Liberal party. The lastest economic musing by Wayne Swan will help but it was the exact idea that was spewed forth by Malcolm Turnbull a few days earlier in a different guise. The me tooism is still rife. The state labor perks and privelidges that ex Premiers get shows that Rees also only talks the talk and doesnt walk the walk. he is another installment on NSW. Until Labor and Meredith wakes up to this they are seriously misguided and I suggest voters to vote elsewhere for people with more credibility.