Australia: ANAEMIC PARTY NEEDS A SHOT IN THE ARM

Senator John Faulkner believes that the Labor Party should encourage "activists" into its ranks. Photo: Glen McCurtayne

Michelle Grattan* – The Sydney Morning Herald, opinion

JULIA GILLARD wants to be seen as a ''reformer'' - up to a point. Reforming the Labor Party hasn't been one of her priorities. She won't be thanking elder statesman John Faulkner for once again pushing into her face the party's cultural problems.

Faulkner is obviously frustrated at how the recent report he and former premiers Bob Carr and Steve Bracks did on the state of the party has been treated. They found the ALP in need of dramatic change; robust recommendations included ''primaries'' for some preselections and more democracy for members.

ALP power brokers have been cool to the proposals and Gillard hasn't shown any enthusiasm; she's already drowning in difficult issues. Faulkner, in Thursday's Wran Lecture on the ALP, admitted he was pessimistic about the fate of the reform plan, but he's not giving up without a fight.

In a swingeing attack, he condemned key elements of modern Labor: how it suppresses dissent in a quest for a confected unanimity, and discourages activists who don't aspire to be politicians, basically because they get in the way of people who do. A generation of activists had been lost; now Labor risked losing a generation of voters.

All true. But as Rodney Cavalier, an activist on the issue of Labor, highlighted, party reform needs to be driven by the leader - Gough Whitlam being the model - or at least supported by him or her. Is Gillard up to leading such a charge? Frankly, probably not. And does she want a party where the leadership is pressed and challenged by red-blooded debate at national conference and elsewhere? Hardly.

It's possible, however, that December's national conference might be a little more forthright than the last one, which Faulkner condemned for not seeing a single vote over a contested issue. For one thing, the review's proposals will be dealt with there. For another, issues including gay marriage and trade are exercising the left, which is getting a (faint) voice back. And what about live animal exports, a subject so concerning caucus members? What about a motion to ban the trade? Dare you.

One of Faulkner's most important points is his call for the party to encourage ''activists'' into its ranks, rather than have arm's length alliances with groups, reaching out for endorsement of particular policies. GetUp has shown just how many people can be mobilised on issues; this is happening when ALP membership is falling away. But even if it wanted to put out the welcome mat, making structural changes to encourage activists, it would be a big job getting them through the ALP door. Political parties have a bad name; they've become a turn-off for the young, many of whom want to engage only on an ad hoc issue-by-issue basis. Yet without having more challenge and policy contestability internally, Labor will continue to suffer from the anaemia Faulkner identifies.

And it will be diminished even in the role to which it has now been reduced, that of ''an association of political professionals'' - politicians, aspiring politicians, and those who run machinery for acquiring and keeping power. A party with activists widens the gene pool from which to choose the aspirants; it is also one in which the politicians and the wannabes are more often reminded of their base and their values. Activists shove their idealistic elbows into people's ribs. Ah yes, no wonder the pragmatists might fear they'd spoil the cosy little party.

*Political editor of The Age - More Michelle Grattan articles