From Carr to Keneally: Labor in Office in NSW 1995-2011

FROM CARR TO KENEALLY

FROM CARR TO KENEALLY

Labor in office in NSW

1995–2011

Edited by

DAVID CLUNE AND RODNEY SMITH

First published in Australia in 2012

Copyright © in the collection David Clune and Rodney Smith 2012

Copyright © in the individual chapters with their authors 2012

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CONTENTS

Preface

Rodney Cavalier

Contributors

List of figures and tables

Introduction and acknowledgements

David Clune and Rodney Smith

PART I: THE PARTIES AND INDEPENDENTS, 1995–2011

1 The Labor Party

Rodney Cavalier

2 The Liberal Party

Rodney Smith

3 The Nationals and rural politics

Bradley Bowden

4 Non-rural Independents and the minor parties

Rodney Smith

PART II: KEY INSTITUTIONS OF NSW GOVERNMENT, 1995–2011

5 Parliament

Rodney Smith

6 Premiers and Cabinets

Paul Fawcett

7 The public service

Michael Di Francesco

8 NSW and federalism

Anne Twomey

PART III: POLICY DEVELOPMENTS IN NSW, 1995–2011

9 Budgets and finance

Russell Ross

10 Health

David Gadiel and Jeremy Sammut

11 Education

Geoffrey Sherington and John Hughes

12 Community services

Kylie Valentine and Deborah Brennan

13 Law and order

Sandra Egger

14 Industrial relations

Greg Patmore

15 Transport

Claudine Moutou and Corinne Mulley

16 Urban planning

Robert Freestone and Peter Williams

17 The environment

Bruce Thom

PART IV: THE 2011 NSW ELECTION

18 NSW politics, 2007–10

David Clune

19 Election rules, public funding and private donations

Anika Gauja

20 The campaign

David Clune

21 The news media

Peter Chen

22 The polls and voter attitudes

Murray Goot

23 The results

Antony Green

PART V: INTERPRETATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

24 How Labor governed

Rodney Smith

25 Why Labor lost

David Clune

26 The state of democracy in NSW

Michael Hogan

Notes

PREFACE

During 2006 New South Wales celebrated 150 years of responsible government. The celebrations, such as they were, had no fireworks or processions or pageant. The then government had appointed a committee to undertake and fund scholarly research on the passage of those years. Scholarship and publications were our game and sole interest. The intention was not only a commemoration of the culminating enactments which took effect in 1856. The broad aim was to examine the consequences of the creation of a bicameral legislature, a Cabinet drawn from the parliament and requiring the confidence of the Legislative Assembly, then to continue our work through all the years since as the franchise broadened and the assumptions of government evolved.

The Committee for the Sesquicentenary of Responsible Government 1856–2006 sponsored nearly forty projects examining aspects of the history of representative democracy and governance in NSW. In the prelude to 2006 and in the year itself, people interested in our history and political system were able to read accounts of the historical process by which autonomy was conceded by the Imperial government, a history of the franchise and electoral system, new studies of the major political parties and a thorough examination for the first time of the minor parties and independent candidates who sometimes play a decisive role in who governs our state and what policies they enact. Two volumes appeared on the premiers of NSW since 1856 and a volume on all the governors of NSW. We published a history of the NSW parliament and a two volume history of the regions of the state. We did not overlook conventional biographies—not all of them about conventional people.

The commemoration came to an end in 2006. The mandate of the committee appointed to oversight scholarly works did not end. With the assistance of the Premier’s Department, the committee had been husbanding its funds with care. Project after project came in under budget. The moneys not spent were returned to a trust account administered by the Premier’s Department on instruction from the Sesquicentenary Committee.

Over the five years since 2006, books have continued to appear funded by the Sesquicentenary Trust as scholars in the field have put forward ideas. A long way ahead of the 2011 NSW general election, two scholars proposed a major work of essays on the record of the Labor government first elected in 1995. Those scholars were Rodney Smith from the Department of Government at the University of Sydney and David Clune, a committee member and the Parliamentary Historian, who was approaching a well-earned retirement. They proposed a work that examined developments in the parties, key government institutions and public policy during Labor’s period in government.

Dr Clune and Associate Professor Smith assembled writers who were expected to set aside the shambles in which the government had come to an end and undertake a sober analysis of all the sixteen years of Labor government. The writers have fulfilled their obligations. I commend the editors for their cajolery and encouragement, causing the contributors to achieve this outcome. An important step in the book’s production was a two day seminar of authors at the University of Sydney. Each contributor benefited from the comments of other contributors.

Underpinning the project was the certainty that the government was coming to an end. Our every assumption was that the Labor government (under whichever leader) would perish by the greatest landslide in a century. Analysing the election as an event in itself was critically important because the model of governance constructed by Bill McKell in 1941 was smashed during 2007–08. A new era was going to begin as soon as the new Coalition government was sworn in after polling day.

The election statistics compiled by Antony Green make for chilling reading or the stuff that warms the heart, depending on your disposition. Labor had been in power for 52 of the 70 years since McKell remade NSW Labor. Not just in power but effective. In the 23 general elections held in that time Labor won sixteen and was competitive in all but three. Loss of office in 1965 and 1988 did not change the colour of the ocean—2011 did. For 70 years Labor was a party somewhere in the 40 per cents vying for government. Now its ceiling is in the 30s, slipping into the 20s. Three out of four NSW voters rejected Labor. The election was a cataclysm, unprecedented anywhere in Australia since the establishment of the two-party system.

The ALP was all but wiped out in the Hunter and just hung on in the Illawarra—heartland since the nineteenth century. Labor holds a few suburbs in the inner ring of Sydney and its western fringe. Labor holds not one country seat. In eighteen seats it came third or worse, with a primary vote in the teens or single digits. It could not have been worse.

A precedent for a defeat of this dimension is 1932, when NSW Labor offered two parties in the wake of the governor’s dismissal of the Lang government. Labor then polled 44.6 per cent, some 20 percentage points in front of where Labor is now. If you take comfort from Labor’s recovery only nine years later, look at what happened in those nine years: Labor lost twice more emphatically; John Curtin, federal Labor leader, devoted some part of every day to the destruction of Jack Lang and Langism; federal intervention broke the rulers of the NSW branch. Backed by federal authority, McKell toppled Lang. McKell represented a complete break from all that had gone before; he campaigned against what Labor had been as much as the government of the day.

In the course of the life of the Labor government, some 130 ALP branches folded. Most of the rest are phantoms, paper frauds that could not pass a breath-on-the-mirror test. The consequence was obvious on polling day: the land mass of NSW lacked Labor people to staff booths. It was not possible to paper the cracks with the salaried political class, not even with an injection from interstate. The departure of stalwarts in such numbers is a telling commentary on what party members thought of the government that ruled in their name.

A question Labor will need to find answers to is how a government that began with Bob Carr, Andrew Refshauge, Michael Egan, Craig Knowles, Jeff Shaw, Bob Debus and other good people, a government that picked up John Watkins and Morris Iemma along the way, could finish as it did: the worst government NSW has seen. Labor came back from 1965 and 1988; Labor in opposition then had no cause to dissociate itself from the record of what had gone before. Not so after 2011.

This book will make its appearance when the O’Farrell government is one year old. Debate on reforming the ALP will not have ceased. The structures that prevailed over 70 years are no longer serving NSW Labor. Structure is everything. The structure of the ALP has not changed and is not likely to change. Inside that sentence is an estimation of the prospect of NSW Labor becoming electorally competitive any time soon.

Rodney Cavalier

CHAIRMAN

Committee for the Sesquicentenary of Responsible Government in

New South Wales 1856–2006

CONTRIBUTORS

Bradley Bowden is an Associate Professor in the Griffith Business School, Griffith University.

Deborah Brennan is a Professor in the Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales.

Rodney Cavalier is a political historian whose writing concentrates on the Australian Labor Party.

Peter Chen is a Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

David Clune is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

Michael Di Francesco is a Senior Lecturer in the Australia and New Zealand School of Government.

Sandra Egger is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales.

Paul Fawcett is a Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

Robert Freestone is a Professor in the Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales.

David Gadiel is an economist who contributes to the Centre for Independent Studies, among other places.

Anika Gauja is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

Murray Goot is a Professor in Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University.

Antony Green is an election analyst at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Michael Hogan is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

John Hughes is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney.

Claudine Moutou is a doctoral student in the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney.

Corinne Mulley is a Professor in the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney.

Greg Patmore is a Professor in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney.

Russell Ross is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics, University of Sydney.

Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

Geoffrey Sherington is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney.

Rodney Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

Bruce Thom is an Honorary Professor in the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney.

Anne Twomey is an Associate Professor in the Sydney Law School, University of Sydney.

Kylie Valentine is a Senior Research Fellow in the Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales.

Peter Williams is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales.

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

FIGURES

0.1 State electoral divisions, election 2011

0.2 State electoral divisions, Greater Sydney area, election 2011

7.1 Evolution of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, 1995–2011

9.1 Unemployment rate, NSW and Australia, 1995–2010

9.2 CPI inflation rates, NSW and Australia, 1995–2010

9.3 NSW government capital works in real terms, base year 2010–11 ($ billion)

15.1 The movement and timing of ministerial posts for Transport and Roads, 1995–2011

21.1 References to political parties during the election period

21.2 Amount of election coverage in Sydney newspapers during the election

21.3 Primary story emphasis, Sydney newspapers

21.4 Secondary story emphasis (if any), Sydney newspapers

21.5 Policy areas discussed

21.6 ALP and Liberal YouTube content and views

21.7 Blog posts mentioning Keneally and O’Farrell, 2011 campaign period

22.1 Labor’s share of the two-party-preferred vote, opinion polls, 2008–11

22.2 Support for opposition leader as preferred premier, Newspoll, 2008–11

22.3 Approval of Premier and Labor’s primary vote, Newspoll, 2008–11

22.4 Disapproval of Premier and Labor’s primary vote, Newspoll, 2008–11

23.1 Votes in NSW Legislative Assembly elections, 1950–2011

TABLES

3.1 Political representation in country NSW, 1995–2011: Inland eleclorates

3.2 Political representation in country NSW, 1995–2011: Coastal eleclorates

4.1 Independent electoral performance in Hunter, Illawarra and overall Sydney region seats, 1995–2011

4.2 Independent electoral performance in three traditional Labor regions, 1995–2011

4.3 Legislative Council votes and seats won by selected minor parties, 1981–2011

5.1 Party strengths in the NSW Legislative Council, 1995–2011: Raw numbers and Power Index

5.2 Minor party voting in the Legislative Council: Selected MLCs

7.1 Central agency chief executives, 1995–2011

9.1 NSW government Budget forecasts and outcomes, 1995–2010

19.1 Private and public funding of NSW parties, March 1995–March 2007

19.2 Political expenditure by NSW parties, 1999–2007

19.3 Expenditure caps and funding entitlements for NSW registered parties, 2011

23.1 Flow of minor party preferences at 2007 election

23.2 Candidates and groups contesting Legislative Council elections, 1978–2011

23.3 Legislative Council percentage votes by party, 1978–2011

23.4 Classification of 2007–11 electorates

23.5 Country seats, party vote and seats won by party, 1988–2011

23.6 First-preference Legislative Assembly votes and seats won in the Sydney area, 1988–2011

INTRODUCTION AND

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The 2011 election marked a significant transition in NSW politics, one with important implications for public policy, governance and the future of the party system. While recent federal elections and elections in other states have received book-length studies, no NSW election has been the subject of a comprehensive analysis since Ken Turner, Helen Nelson and Ernie Chaples edited The Wran Model, which covered politics and elections in the 1970s and 1980s. The current volume examines not only the 2011 campaign and its results, but also developments in the parties, key government institutions and public policy during the sixteen years of Labor rule commencing in 1995. It is basically a project of the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Under the guidance of Henry Mayer and Dick Spann, the department in the 1960s fostered and encouraged pioneering research into Australian and NSW politics. Ken Turner, in particular, carried on this work, which produced The Wran Model. Two other members of the department’s staff, Martin Painter and Martin Laffin, edited Reform and Reversal, a major study of the Greiner and Fahey governments. From Carr to Keneally continues the tradition, combining a study of the 2011 election with an analysis of how Labor governed from 1995 to 2011.

In bringing this work to fruition, the support of the Committee for the Sesquicentenary of Responsible Government and its chairman, Rodney Cavalier, was vital. We would like to thank Professor Murray Goot for giving the project its initial impetus and helping it out at various points along the way. The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia sponsored a July 2011 workshop on the themes of the book, which was held at the University of Sydney and entitled ‘Australian State Politics and Policy in Transition: The Case of NSW’. This workshop allowed most of the authors of chapters in this book to present and discuss their arguments and interpretations with other expert scholars. Ken Turner provided valuable advice and editorial assistance on a number of the chapters. Eamonn Clifford and Warwick Smith at NSW Land and Property Information supplied the maps of the 2011 election results. Elizabeth Weiss, Rebecca Kaiser and the editorial staff at Allen & Unwin took the manuscript and transformed it into a fine book.

David Clune

Rodney Smith

September 2011

FIGURE 0.1 STATE ELECTORAL DIVISIONS, ELECTION 2011

FIGURE 0.2 STATE ELECTORAL DIVISIONS, GREATER SYDNEY AREA,

ELECTION 2011

PART I

THE PARTIES AND

INDEPENDENTS,

1995–2011

CHAPTER 1

THE LABOR PARTY¹

Rodney Cavalier

During the sixteen years of Labor in government, 1995–2011, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) ceased to be a creative contributor to the policy-making of the government bearing its name. The members of the Labor Party ceased to play a role in the governance of their own party.²

Bill McKell, Labor leader 1939–47 and premier 1941–47, had created a model of governance that would deliver government for 49 of the next 67 years—and that remained relevant even when Labor was not in government. In 2008, the McKell model came to an end, its pieces broken and lost. The party has come to treat the leader as godhead—an approach to statecraft eerily similar to conceptions of monarchy in medieval times. The leader is infallible, to be obeyed in all matters; liege service in the court of the king is the sole means of advancement; connection to the connected is the only game worth pursuing; dolts prosper while ever they are loyal. Loyalty is absolute, whatever the grievances, whatever the injustice. Loyalty remains absolute until the moment of assassination, after which loyalty transfers absolutely and the processes continue as before. Under the godhead model, the purpose of the ALP is to become an instrument of the leader’s will as translated by those who operate the party’s central machinery. When the controllers of the ruling faction act in concord with the parliamentary leader, their power is irresistible. In such circumstances, paramount power will override the rules and practices of the party to achieve the outcome enunciated.

None of this seemed at all likely in 1995. The destruction of democracy was incremental until 2002–03 when, in the space of just a few months, the machine’s leadership asserted absolute control over candidate selection and succeeded absolutely against a feeble sham of resistance. Thereafter, the assault on local democracy was unresisted. The use of paramount power entrenched the lieges of the machine. In the space of two elections, Caucus independence became a fond memory, as did a parliamentary party capable of scrutiny and self-criticism. Independence disappeared because of an aggregate of (1) members of parliament (MPs) imposed by central authority, often against the express opposition of an overwhelming majority of the local ALP membership, (2) MPs protected from preselection and (3) Members of the Legislative Council, all of whom are dependent on factional anointment. The rude democratic culture of the party subsided into a culture of entitlement. A Caucus culture of robust criticism of the leadership group and a fierce protection of Caucus independence occasioned leadership stability over six decades and nine changes of leader. The loss of independence and obeisance to the godhead has resulted in unending instability, caverns of treachery and a loss of respect for the office of leader.

THE BEGINNING

Bob Carr had been leader for seven years when he accepted the commission to become premier. He had been an MP for eleven years, including service as a minister in the final years of the Wran government and the entire life of the Unsworth government. He had the immense advantage of being a participant in both good government and poor.

Carr enjoyed a limited sense of the power within his potential. He had not sought to be leader and actively sought alternatives to a fate he openly dreaded. Very tentatively, he explored his influence. He was resigned to coping with whatever MPs the local memberships preselected and the shadows the Caucus elected. That was, after all, the tradition with which he had grown up. The 1991 poll was the great comeback. After being written off, Carr achieved a hung parliament. Vested with new authority, he exercised it with hesitation and care by appealing to the established leaders of the factions to purge those who had disappointed him and to provide him with talent that he identified. The factions delivered what he sought. Carr was not a gladhander; he was not going to work the bar or visit offices. He relied on his performance on the floor of the House—which was outstanding from the outset—and getting out and about in the electorate where MPs could see for themselves how he was going down with their constituents. He attended ALP functions. Knowing Labor history, he knew how to touch emotional buttons.

RELATIONS WITH HEAD OFFICE

Relations were always cordial. At the time of his accession, the party’s general secretary was Stephen Loosley who, more than anyone, decided that only Carr could be leader and set about making it happen. Loosley departed for the Senate in 1990. The key machine operative in the Carr era was John Della Bosca (general secretary 1990–99), who played the vital role in the difficult, very close election that brought Labor to power as well as in its two triumphant re-elections. Della Bosca devised very different strategies for 1991 and 1995. The same structure pursued different messages: 1991 running against Greiner over taxes and charges; 1995 against the ‘comic misfits’ in the ministry.

Carr recalled that he was at his lowest point in 1995 when he arrived at the Parramatta studios of 2KY to cut commercials for television. He was tired; the shooting took hours; he put headphones on and was fielding phone calls. The camera moved around while a stationary Carr explained to a listener how his government was going to solve problems in policy areas. Research showed how strongly he came over on radio. The electorate was beginning to entertain the idea of Carr as an alternative premier. The commercials highlighted his strength: his voice offering assurance. Carr remembered the Sunday night, six nights out from polling day, when the commercials began to screen. He retreated from the lounge room—he could not bear it; however, the quality was perfect. Della Bosca had put aside the funds for this final assault. The amount of advertising in the final days was massive: it shifted votes and won the campaign—by the narrowest of margins.

Carr had known Della Bosca since his teenage years. In him he observed someone who could read polls, able to see beyond the top line—a rare gift. Unlike the Liberal Party at the time, in which Nick Greiner had created a separate campaign arm, relations within the ALP were collegial. Carr’s staff worked seamlessly with head office. Part of the reason was that Carr dealt exclusively with the general secretary every fortnight, working off an agenda for over an hour. The sessions included frank assessments on how the government was performing. Carr recalled that the meetings became more valuable in the second term. Della Bosca did not step over the line. He certainly did not tell Carr who should be made a minister.

GROWING IN POWER

After victory, Carr moved against shadow ministers he thought were non-performers in favour of the likes of Craig Knowles and Carl Scully. Those whom Carr elevated from the backbench, leapfrogging those who had done the hard yards of opposition, owed their principal loyalty to Carr. In 1999, more of his team came on. Carr personally purged the non-performing Pam Allan and Gabrielle Harrison.

Carr’s method was elementary. He set about seducing the ambitious so that the pre-existing loyalties and leadership groups were placed at a discount. Carr was relying upon (1) the prestige of his office, which he was intending to deploy across the Caucus, (2) the suasion of the Right’s leadership group and (3) the muscle of head office. Pulling off a ticket of the premier’s choice made Carr a far more dominant premier than Wran ever sought to be.

The character of Caucus altered fundamentally at the 2003 general election. The then general secretary (Eric Roozendaal, 1999–2004) had sought and gained unlimited powers to impose candidates under the feint of changing the gender balance. Roozendaal supervised impositions in four safe seats where the imposed candidates had next to no base and could not have won a contested ballot. Each was in her own way a disaster for the ALP—one facing trial, one under investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). The selection of Kristina Keneally over another woman, Deirdre Grusovin, the sitting member for Heffron, was a scabrous exercise. The only claims of these women over a legion of similar Labor women were that they had impressed Roozendaal. Independent thinking was not a virtue. Carr acquiesced. His interest was in finding seats for Frank Sartor and Linda Burney, an Aboriginal woman.

The Caucus that assembled after the 2003 general election was a gathering of guided missiles. In such a Caucus, Carr had his way on all that mattered. With the faction that calls itself a Left, Carr set about methodical destabilisation. He rightly took a deep interest in whom the factions were offering for the ministry. He was adept at exercising a silent veto: when Carr chose not to block the election of Joe Tripodi, it was a signal his own retirement was imminent.

BUILDING THE SINEWS FOR WAR

The costs of continuous campaigning even inside a fixed four-year term altered the structures of party politics. All year round, Labor was paying for the convening of focus groups, geographically targeted opinion polls and qualitative polling. These are costly outlays.

Labor went after money in big licks—quantums unprecedented at any time in its history. Contributions from party units, affiliated unions and public funding were not sufficient, as they had been just 20 years earlier. The sources for the big money were developers, hotels and gambling interests. Some of the funds came directly via declared donations; the remainder came via fundraising events. Fundraisers were of four different kinds: ALP dinners; industry dinners; the right to observe at the ALP annual conference; private lunches.

ALP dinners were big occasions, with guest lists in the order of 700 at major Sydney hotels. People paid large tariffs for the chance to talk to ministers, especially Planning ministers. Frank Sartor (Minister for Planning 2005–08) said the response to favours was always the same: ‘Give me a card, write me a letter. The developers had a point of view, the bureaucrats another, so it was essential to have them in a room. You needed witnesses. Sometimes you laid on a half-day of interviews. Developers were in a queue.’ Placement at table was important: ministers might veto who they were sitting with, but that did not stop the vetoed from coming up to them.

Industry dinners were part of the ALP Business Dialogue, Labor’s fundraising club. Members paid $15 000 to $20 000 per annum, with about 20 people in a room, many of them developers. The general secretaries were careful in what they asked of ministers: ‘Just talk to him. I don’t care what you do.’ Business people also paid serious money to be observers at the ALP annual conference. Private lunches were rare and potentially dangerous: they involved a selective lunch with the premier, the treasurer, the Planning minister and a developer. Finally, there were auctions in which ministers were the prize for a lunch with ten people. The proceeds went to charity.

Sartor explained the expectations of the ALP machine in this way: ‘Mate-mate-mate-mate, four or five times. There was an index of mates, always prefaced by we don’t expect you to do anything but we want you to see him, the bureaucrats are mucking things up.’ Premiers attended all the major dinners. Entirely separately, Carr would see a reputable big investor who had been blocked by a local council in circumstances thought to be unfair. Carr ensured the Minister for Planning was present. Always present, too, were a staffer and a public servant. Notes were taken.

The need for such volumes of money fundamentally altered the organisation of the ALP, transforming the need of a party in government for assistance from the party below. The evolution of modern politics has meant parties do not require mobile armies of activists. Branch members and party supporters once delivered leaflets, erected posters and staffed campaign offices; nowadays, political machines do not bother with the personalised pamphlet. Instead, they deploy direct mail, broadcast email, phone banks and unending surveys of opinion to fine-tune the message. Candidates lock into the central message or else. The mobile army of activists has been replaced by a sedentary army of ministerial staffers—a political class on large salaries with travel privileges, furnished offices in the best addresses in the city, mobile phones, computers, taxi vouchers and the like. Staffers are permanent and available at any time to serve as required. The work of staffers is in concert with the efforts of party officials, union officials and mercenaries in polling, direct mail and public relations. When Labor goes out of power, its sedentary army disappears. So do most of the sources of funding.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF ABOLISHING PARTY MEMBERSHIP

The continuing advance of a cartel party receives its homage when the ‘graduates’ of an ALP training course called Campaign Insight receive certificates for what they have learned about ‘campaigning’. The certificates are a substitute for the learning that used to take place at the feet of masters. You observed, you did as you were told, you volunteered for more, you learned from your mistakes. Shortcomings warranted a verbal thrashing of the kind you might have thought you had left behind at school. The people at the other end of these lessons were stalwarts; they had earned the right to demand effort because they led by example.

ALP campaigns took place below: the fundraising was undertaken locally. So were pamphlet design and organising the printing. You learned basic design principles, who was reliable, what represented value for money, the importance of being timely. Stalwarts related stories. Travelling a constituency and speaking from the back of a truck, new members were thrown in at the deep end, learning the tricks of engaging a passing throng. Candidates spoke in public halls, learning how to deal with interjectors and worse. At dawn, you put your snipes high up power poles; you tore down all evidence of the other side.

Everyone worked for a living or was a student or an aged pensioner. The ALP employed no one you ever saw. Union officials might get a day off to assist towards the end of the campaign. No one was available for weeks at a time. The campaign was whatever locals made it. With the death of the ALP below, the party gives certificates to reward what was once basic to membership of an ALP branch—the training of the next generation of activists.

THE UNBROKEN DISCIPLINE OF THE NSW RIGHT

According to the organisational principles upon which the Right is built, a general secretary is right even when he is wrong. Because of such discipline, the Right has ensured its dominance for 70 years. Because of such discipline, the party in NSW is in a diabolical state.

Basic principles of governance have broken down in the NSW branch. The strongmen who ran the machine in times past have disappeared. These were seriously tough men, very capable instillers of fear who rarely had cause to deliver a threat because they understood that a spectre was always more frightening. They had other jobs in a union or parliament; they were steeped in Labor tradition, aware that ALP conferences had their own rude persona worthy of respect. They were restraints on the wilfulness of the general secretaries who, under such oversight, possessed a sense of how much of the candle was worth burning so that when the stoush came to an end, the party retained some sort of flickering light.

General secretaries in times past had worked for a living before entering the job; however, the last six (Dastyari, Thistlethwaite, Bitar, Roozendaal, Della Bosca, Loosley and Richardson) have only ever drawn an income from inside the political class. The party of the workers has a machine leadership that is wholly disengaged from the world of work. In such a world, it becomes possible to believe that all political outcomes are the result of manipulation: leadership is the tracking of public opinion with a view to crafting messages aimed at the hot points discerned in the polling. The role of the party membership is minimal for the good reason that a party membership is no longer necessary for any of the basic functions of a campaign. It is not needed for the customary work in an election campaign in which, in all the seats that matter, outside professionals discharge the tasks the locals used to perform; nor is it required for fundraising, which has well and truly been replaced by the dinners for the big end of town and the contributions from developers and gambling interests; and it is no longer a source of candidates and renewal, given that the imposition of outsiders and the unknown failed to elicit meaningful opposition from either the so-called Left or resistance by the electorate.

All too many members have worked this out. Hence the ALP has been bleeding members: 138 or so branches have folded since 1995. Of the remaining branches, most are phantoms that come together as and when required to elect delegates. A branch has to be totally dead to close—it supposedly remains alive while there is someone to answer the phone from a factional operative who has only one question: ‘Who can you send to the SEC and FEC?’ If a branch can come together to do that and nothing else, the branch is deemed to be living. Nor does it have to meet: all that is required is for the secretary to put names on a return sheet. The ALP membership in 2011 is a residue of cadres who benefit from being the last man (or woman) standing.

THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE BECOMES AN EMPTY VESSEL

The last real conference—the last real contest between Left and Right—was held in 1986. This is one area of party activity that we can analyse by way of a matrix. As recently as the 1980s, the conference went for three days and two nights, and rarely dealt with more than 40 per cent of the business, so intense and prolonged were the debates. In 2002 and for the last decade, the conference was over in two days, and no nights. Once there would have been a chorus of contesting voices, followed by a sequence of shows of hands on the gag, several amendments and the motion itself. Conferences this century have passed without a single count. In the 1960s, in debates on conscription or foreign policy or the ALP rules, 100 delegates might jump for the call. No one now jumps; the call is read from a list prepared by the factions. Conflict has been taken off the floor and put under the stage. There is no conflict. The ending of the Cold War ended the battle for ideology. The two factions are executive placement agencies that collude to divide the available spoils.

The annual conference does not meet annually. It does not meet except if and when it serves the political imperatives of the ruling faction. Whether it meets, when it meets, the duration of its meeting—these are decisions made by the subordinate administrative committee. In making a decision of such magnitude, it has assumed sovereignty in the ALP. The ALP does not enjoy the equivalent of the rule of law; nothing in the ALP rules serves as the equivalent of a constitutional requirement for convening a conference. There is no recourse to an injunction to compel a meeting (or no one has tried). British Labour can meet in conference with the world at war in order to demand the withdrawal of Labour from the governing Coalition, yet Australian Labor does not meet for fear that someone might say something unhelpful to an election campaign.

The conduct of a ballot at the annual conference is worthy of Al Capone’s Chicago. No pretence is made that a vote is cast in secrecy. Union delegations vote openly, seated around tables provided for such mass exercise of the franchise. Polling booths do not have a curtain or any means of preserving secrecy. After filling out a ballot paper, there are multiple hazards for the voter to negotiate before they reach the ballot box. In a public election, scrutineers are present to ensure the probity of the ballot. In a Labor Party election, scrutineers are present to ensure the voters cast their votes as the faction expects. The vast majority of voters have filled in their ballots under supervision, but that has not saved them from a second or additional check by an enforcer who is making certain the supervisor is doing his job correctly. Delegates under suspicion are accompanied to the booth.

In 2003, John Faulkner, then Senate leader, sought to be endorsed as number 1 on the ALP ticket and refused all deals. The right-wing machine backed the decision of General Secretary Roozendaal that Faulkner must be defeated. In spite of massive misgivings, most of the Right stuck. Faulkner was astonished at how much the culture of the party had changed: he was encountering a generation that had never before been asked for a vote. A generation has passed through the ranks of the Labor Party—the youngish people who now control it—that has no understanding of the courtesies and protocols of a democratic election in which voters take seriously the vote they are casting. The culture of democratic contest has been replaced by reliance on instructions about what the faction leaderships want. The 2003 annual conference represented the first time such people had been asked for a vote. And probably the last.

WITHDRAWAL FROM POLICY-MAKIKING

All the authority has leeched out of the annual conference. The substitute is the theatre of the set-piece, occasions for parliamentary leaders to speak to an (apparently) adoring audience under arc-light. Once upon a time—the 1970s—educationists wrote an education policy that influenced the early Wran governments. Pioneer environmentalists wrote policies on logging and mining rutile sands that caused the right-wing unions to move heaven and earth to see them defeated. Policies on a new regime for planning were passed into law. Barrie Unsworth rewrote policy on worker participation to reflect what he had learned in West Germany; a resulting pale echo was the placing of union representatives on government boards.

Thin booklets have been replaced by ever thicker books that have passed 300 pages, often with supplements. That the party should be producing record numbers of printed pages while making less contribution than at any time in history is not a dilemma. The slim booklets from the conferences that had meaning were produced by the then technologies of composing and typesetting—expensive, cumbersome, no flourishes. The conference book of 2009 is typical, weighing in at 399 pages. Bulk is bulk, nothing more. It has become the norm, a curse of the word processor, the consequence of technology making so easy the reproducing of words already published. The quantity of intellectual contribution by those who carry our policy committees is rather less. The prose efforts of the twelve policy committees came to seventeen pages—prose explaining past labours, arguments for the policies the committees were proposing all amounted to just 4 per cent of the bulk. Committees did not list how often they met, if at all. The four committees—Environment, Indigenous Affairs, Industry and Local Government—managed zero prose. So much of the policy offering is motherhood—many committees do no more than offer plaudits for NSW government initiatives. Some reports are a string of disconnected announcements drawn from ministerial press releases. One suspects that much of what little editing took place was the work of a minister’s office. A good report or bad receives the same attention from delegates: none. Drained of the controversial, introduced with saccharine, policy reports have no chance of engaging the mass of delegates who, starved of contact with their like for a whole year, get on with socialising. The hubbub of conversation and the sea of empty seats reveal the primary purpose of attendance for little other than the set-pieces of leaders’ speeches and the Administrative Committee report. The two factions have colluded to drain the conference of its role as a policy-setter. Why should delegates participate in the pretence that policy is made there?

THE END COMES

There comes a time in the life of a NSW government when its management goes wrong. The government does not address the root of the problem; rather, it invests heavily in addressing the perceptions. That moment is crystal clear in retrospect; it is one of the glories of a competitive democracy that the punters work it out before the commentators. It is then remarkable how long it is before apprehension overtakes the Cabinet, the party machines, ministerial staffers, all those phalanxes of advice that have grown rich in telling a successful government how to remain successful.

The general secretary since 2010, Sam Dastyari, told this author that the relationship between head office and the government was too close. What had once been a clear line had become blurred. Political decisions were overrun by the electoral cycle. By 2010, the machine had come to recognise the depth of the errors made in recent years. The imposed MPs of 2003 had a plenitude of personal problems. Four big names had to go, including Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid, and as many others as could be persuaded to depart. Premier Keneally resisted with some tenacity the removal of her champion, Joe Tripodi. Dastyari did not relent. Keneally buckled and then became the most enthusiastic advocate of what she had