Queensland Labor Leadership

Queensland has just seen its second remarkable election in three years, with a tiny Labor opposition picking up enough seats to turn the ruling Liberal-National party out of government.

The campaign basically followed the usual script: the opposition is told us that the government was no good, and the government told us that the opposition had no policies.

Throughout the campaign, there is one big issue that the Liberal-National Party could have hammered Labor on, but never even mentioned: Queensland Labor’s new leadership selection rules, and (what should be of more interest to Liberal-National politickers) the increased control it gives of unions over the direction of the party.

There were plenty of suggestions and accusations made about links between Labor and bikie gangs, which was treated by the media and voters with the ridicule it deserved. Meanwhile, the unions were not mentioned, despite experience telling us that voters can be turned off by the quite credible assertion that Labor is run by them.

Consider, for example, the new rules for deciding on the parliamentary leader.

At its recent state conference, Queensland Labor approved new rules on how state parliamentary leaders will be chosen. The choice of candidates for the leadership will be a tripartite decision made by the Labor members of parliament, party members and labour unions. Each of the three groups will have an equal (one third) say in the decision.

There are serious problems with this new arrangement and it will eventually prove to be unworkable.

The problems

Under the new rules, Labor’s parliamentary team could be led by a person who has the support of none of his or her colleagues. Consider a situation where two members of the parliamentary team nominate for leadership. Technically, one of the candidates could receive no votes in the party room, but win the leadership through popularity among party members and unions. Such a situation, in which the leader of the party does not have the support of his or her colleagues, would, to state the obvious, be completely unworkable.

The parliamentary leader, whether premier or leader of the opposition, needs to have the support of his or her colleagues. The members of the parliamentary team (be it government or opposition) are the ones who have to work with their leader on a daily basis on matters of a policy and a political nature. The example of the Rudd paradox is instructive here: he was, at various times, very popular among Labor members and the wider public, while many of his colleagues found him impossible to work with. The impacts of parliamentarians having to work with such a leader for a long period of time are obvious: disunity, tension, robust debate being stifled, roadblocks to effective policy, burnout of talented ministers, and so on.

A bigger issue is that the rules undermine the democracy of parliament. Labor’s members of parliament do not just represent their party; they also represent the constituents of their electorates. Diminishing the say that those democratically elected parliamentarians have in the election of the leader of either government or opposition erodes the democracy of those institutions.

It also diminishes democracy within the party. Rather than giving more say to rank and file members, as the party reforms were originally intended to do, they simply strengthen the say of the unions. Or, more accurately, union leaders. Powerful union leaders now wield the power to install and depose parliamentary leaders both in the backroom and through their direct say in leadership contests. It is a complete furphy to say that it will give union members a say; if they want to have a say they can join the Labor party and vote as a member of such.

Unions certainly don’t need more influence on the selection of leaders. As Labor pollster Bruce Hawker wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald (in 2013, when state governments were considering legislation to restrict union donations to political parties), “Over its 121 years the influence of unions on the ALP has ebbed and flowed. In recent times, the influence of union officials and faction leaders has been asserted as never before..”

Finally, the direct election by members and unions will impact on the way that prospective leaders will approach policy and politicking. As Julia Gillard argued, when the federal leadership rules were introduced, the leader should not be determined “on the basis of opinion polls, or the number of positive media profiles, or the amount of time spent schmoozing media owners and editors, or the frippery or selfies and content-less media.” Simply put, the system lends itself towards politicians who a populists, political pragmatists, rather than those excelling in leadership and policy nous.

The alternative

The new rules follow a similar arrangement at the federal level, where the party room and party members have equal (one half) say in the leadership. The federal rules, of course, came into being after the Rudd-Gillard leadership battles, which elevated long-standing frustration within the party about the power of factions that don’t represent the rank and file members.

Make no mistake: this is a real problem within the party. Labor is at its best as a grass roots movement, and so, rightly, there is valid frustration with the disproportionate power wielded by faction leaders and decisions made in backroom dealings. But, preventing Labor parliamentarians from choosing their own leader, and eroding the democracy of the parliament is not the best way to tackle the problem.

The best solution to this problem would be to give party members a genuine say in the pre-selection of candidates. This would produce parliamentary teams that genuinely represent the interests of party members rather than narrowly interested union leaders. Problem solved.

Maxine McKew, reviewing for the Monthly Troy Bramston’s book on modern Labor, writes:

Who owns the Labor Party? Who makes the decisions? As Senator Faulkner would say, it ain’t the branch members. The machine bosses and union leaders, who operate a seigneurial system of preferment and patronage, exist in a world of their own making. It is feudal in construction and delivers exactly what is intended – a quiescent caucus.

As Bramston writes in his book:

“The perception, indeed the reality, is that a bunch of powerbrokers can sit around a table in a Chinese restaurant and decide who will enter parliament and who will not.”

This is the root of the problem. The people preselected for candidacy should represent their local members. The elected officials should arise from the grass roots of their local branches. Then, there will be democracy in their choosing of a leader, because the politicians will represent their local members, rather than factional heavyweights. As McKew rightly points out, it is all too easy for union leaders to knock off a parliamentary leader (she cites Iemma, Rees and Rudd as recent examples) when it is the union leaders who preselect the candidates who then enter parliament.

This is where the example of Rudd is useful. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Rudd was completely impossible to work with as a leader, and that there was a clear majority of his parliamentary colleagues who wanted him gone. Let’s also assume that there was no backroom influence whatsoever. In this case, the parliamentary team would have dumped him (as they did), but it would have been entirely sensical.

Now let’s work with the opposite set of assumptions. Let’s say that Rudd was a good leader, but his anti-factional position and interest in party reform earned him the ire of faceless men within the party and the union movement. If the Labor structure favoured pre-selection by rank and file members, without the influence of party or union heavies, then his leadership would have survived, because he would (in this fantastical, hypothetical situation) be supported by the majority of his parliamentary colleagues.

Another important reform that McKew argues for, which was originally proposed by Gough Whitlam, is the direct election of local branch members to the party conference, as well as reduced trade union representation at conferences. These changes would further boost the democracy of the Labor party, but are unlikely to even be considered.