Guest Post by Stuart Whitman
Since 2011 Stuart has been National Convenor of Local Labor, a grassroots Labor reform movement founded by former Member for Casey in the Whitlam government and respected Labor elder Race Mathews to promote ALP action on the recommendations of the 2010 National Review.
If there is an upside to this election loss it is that the Labor Party is now free to genuinely examine our direction and the way we organise ourselves beyond the internal divisiveness of recent years, and then to implement required changes to modernise and reenergise the ALP as a political movement and party of government for the decades ahead.
It is common sense for any organisation to regularly review its performance and to undertake a program of strategic change management to ensure that its work continues to be effective and meaningful. It is not about change for its own sake, but to respond to the reality that the organisation’s external environment is in permanent flux constantly posing new challenges to the relevance and existence of the organisation. The Australia Labor Party is no different.
The challenges of an overall declining and ageing membership, and the real sense of disempowerment among Labor members, and their resulting disengagement with the community and voters, pose very real existential threats to the ALP if left unchecked any longer. Combine these with the revolutionary changes in the way people engage with media, government and with each other through new technology platforms inconceivable just a few decades ago, and it is clear that old assumptions and processes need to be overhauled.
It is ironic that on the one hand while we have seen a decline in volunteerism across many sectors in the developed world, the nature of communications technology and social media has given individuals access to a range of information and opinion, as well as the ability to be heard and act that has never been possible before. As a result, when pushed to the brink we have seen people across the Middle East rise up in democratic movements to challenge old political, religious and military power structures, and the Occupy Movement across North America, Europe and parts of Asia, challenge corporate power structures and economic disadvantage. President Obama has gone as far to say that “inequality is the defining issue of our times”. It is arguable none of this would have been possible on the scale it has been undertaken, or to be heard around the globe, if the communications technology revolution had not occurred first.
People are more educated, more informed and more willing to express an opinion. The 21st century may prove to be the age of mass participation. For now the focus is on greater participation in governance but in time it may be become more about participatory economics when the democratic battles have been won. And Labor has a central role to play in both movements.
Following the 2010 near election loss, Senators John Faulkner and Bob Carr, and former Victorian premier Steve Bracks, examined a range of issues around how the ALP organises, develops policy and strategy, campaigns, engages members and communicates with supporters and voters. Significant areas of dysfunction were identified and 31 recommendations to address those gaps offered. Nearly two thirds of those recommendations were adopted in part or in full at the subsequent 2011 ALP National Conference in Sydney.
Unfortunately there has not been significant enough allocation of resources and determination by Party units, particularly at state branch level, to implement those commitments and many have been referred off to processes that have not yet delivered an outcome. Here is a perfect opportunity for the ALP to take action and modernise according to the blueprint offered by the 2010 Review, yet through a toxic mix of indifference, infighting and resistance to change by those most likely to lose power as a result of it, the review looked set to be put on the shelf to gather dust with earlier post-election reviews. The worst thing we can do now, is enter yet another post-election review process without seriously addressing the one before it.
Three things have changed the landscape that gives reformers some hope that this time will be different. Prior to the election, following the return of Kevin Rudd, many in the caucus saw the writing on the wall after years of bitter divisions and voted to adopt the most radical reform yet for rank and file leadership ballots. That makes the ALP the first major political party in Australia’s history to entrust in large part the determination of federal parliamentary party leader to its members. The fact we are now embarking on that very process with the contest between Anthony Albanaese and Bill Shorten, has made all of the other reform commitments from the previous National Conference look much less contentious.
Secondly, our election loss on September 7 has taken the heat off us in government, and enables the Party to revisit the issues raised in the 2010 National Review with a more sincere focus and greater demand for action. Those issues have not gone away and will not go away until we honestly deal with them.
Lastly, the rank and file are at last roused and ready for change. The message coming clearly from ordinary Labor men and women across the country since the election is that they expect our leaders to take action and help build an ALP that values and responds to them as members, and that welcomes and harnesses the great wealth of knowledge, experience and community connections that they have to contribute to Labor’s cause.
So often, in the push for reform from the grassroots, cross-factional movement Local Labor, we have been told, “the Party just hasn’t got the resources for those reforms.” This could not be further from the truth. The very resource that the ALP needs to re-engage with Australians, is the same resource it has to renew itself, and it also happens to be the very same source of our problem to begin with, and that is the great untapped and often neglected potential of the more than 30,000 Australians who proudly call themselves Labor members.
When we genuinely unleash that force of people by adopting reforms for a more democratic, more diverse, more community engaged and more member empowered Labor Party, there will be no looking back and we will rediscover what it means to be a genuine political movement and we will be on our way back to government across Australia.
Stuart Whitman,
National Convenor, Local Labor – Empowering members, branches and communities
Website: http://www.local-labor.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/locallabor/
Stuart Whitman Bio
Stuart first joined the ALP at the age of 20 and contested a city council election at the age of 21 in Queensland. He worked briefly as a research officer in the Goss government, having been campaign director in the state seat of Mundingburra that returned the Goss government with a majority of one and a margin of just 16 votes, until challenged successfully by the Liberal Party in the Court of Disputed Returns on the grounds of late arriving postal ballots from serving military not having been counted in the final vote. A by-election was called and Stuart became disillusioned by the actions of a centralised party machine suddenly disendorsing the existing state candidate without properly consulting local branch members and the campaign committee, and the ensuing divisions that occurred.
After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science, he decided to take time out from politics and see the world, and travelled through Asia, and North America in the preceding years before studying education and relocating to France to teach. Since returning to Australia, Stuart has taught History and Social Studies in the secondary education system and Political Economy and International Business at university, and has undertaken postgraduate studies in Diplomacy and Trade. Stuart says his concern about the arrival of Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party in 2009 and the inspiration from the election of President Obama in the United States the year before that, reconnected him with his Labor roots and made him realise he couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer. Since rejoining the ALP at the start 2010 Stuart has served as secretary of the Malvern Labor Branch, and Education & Training Officer of the Higgins FEA, and secretary and now National Convenor of Local Labor, as well as volunteering in the Higgins campaign at the 2010 election, and the Isaacs and Melbourne campaigns in the 2013 election. His policy interests include science and education; research, industry and innovation; and foreign affairs, aid, human rights and development.
