The Guardian 26 January, 2005
Editorial
Forward to the past
The ALP caucus will decide its new leader on Friday of this week. Barring some dramatic upset, it is most likely that Kim Beazley will emerge the winner.
ALP parliamentarians appear to be so traumatised by last year's electoral defeat and the resignation of Mark Latham that they are now incapable of any forward thinking and are cowering before the bombast and arrogance of Beazley. He made his claim to the leadership the same day that Mark Latham resigned declaring he was "burning with ambition".
Beazley is the choice of the mass media and, under this influence, the choice made in some public opinion polls. Beazley is also the choice of the extreme right-wing of the ALP and, it appears, of most ALP State Premiers.
Even Kevin Rudd, another right-winger but of a later generation, was not able to get his candidature off the ground. It was the search for new blood that led to Mark Latham winning over Beazley when the former Member for Werriwa was elected as ALP leader by only two votes.
But even this support for "generational change" appears to have been abandoned by the majority in favour of what is regarded as a "safe" and "experienced" choice.
As The Guardian goes to press it looks as though Julia Gillard will carry the flag for the younger generation, for a woman as ALP leader and, most importantly, for policies that carry a more progressive flavour than anything that Beazley and his right-wing minions will put forward.
The election of Beazley will be a victory for conservatism when the circumstances demand the opposite. It will signify the continuation of extreme right-wing policies when it is these policies that have brought the ALP to its present parlous situation.
Beazley is a supporter of total subservience to the US in foreign policy, for industrial policies that will not change in any significant way the anti-union policies of Howard and will continue the economic rationalist policies of Hawke, Keating, Howard and Costello.
All ALP factions are calling for "unity" but what is not being asked is — unity for what and in support of what policies? Can there be unity in support of the wars being prepared by the Bush administration? Beazley will certainly support every US war.
Can there be unity in support of the economic rationalist policies of privatisation and attacks on the welfare system? Can there be unity in support of industrial policies that do little or nothing to restore the rights of the trade union movement? To blindly give support to Beazley using the slogan of unity is to abandon the interests of the working people of Australia and there are many ALP members who will not do that.
The election of Beazley will not solve the problems of the ALP — in fact there is no solution. There is a world-wide crisis of social democratic or Labor parties — in Britain, Israel, France, as well as Australia.
Social democratic parties are essentially parties that compromise with capitalism and, when the chips are down, the leaders of these parties put the interests of the capitalists first, not the interests of the working people.
This is the contradiction that ceaselessly tears apart the internal fabric of these parties and is steadily eroding the popular illusion that such parties are capable of bringing worthwhile benefits to the working class majority.
At the present time the Bushes, Blairs, and Howards, fully supported by right-wing Labor, are on the attack. They are generating more wars and occupations and are conducting a huge offensive against the conditions and rights of the working people of all countries.
Genuine supporters of progress and a new political direction need to look elsewhere and not cling to the false belief that somehow and at some time the Labor Party will change for the better and become a genuine workers' party. It will not.
It is the revolutionary people's governments, including those of Venezuela and Brazil, that have brought and are bringing real benefits and liberation to the poor and the working people of these countries.