Right Pulse

Well you maybe aware of the drama that has unfolded in NSW regarding the ALP privatisation of the electricity utilities and the union opposition to it. I blogged recently on the issue and you may re-call Paul Keating had some rather unflattering things to say about the unions opposing the move.

Well the fall out and division within the NSW ALP continues. So much so that it looks like the unions are going to have their policy making power within the NSW ALP significantly reduced – which can only be a good thing for voter choice – by cutting off the party conference from the big decisions of Government, from ABC Stateline:

RODNEY CAVALIER: In short, the pledge is in real difficulty. But no one is pretending otherwise. You’d like these things to have been handled perhaps in a different order. If the thought was that the caucus becomes an independent space ship within the Party, then bring forward rules changes to expressly exempt them from direction. Now, …

QUENTIN DEMPSTER: Well, that means the conference is just an advisory body like the Liberal Party. You’ve got a Liberal Party type advisory structure for your Party forums.

RODNEY CAVALIER: It may well be that it become as highly persuasive body like the UK Labour conference. Now, you might recall, British Labour had real difficulties during the Thatcher years. And three leaders in succession – Kennett, Smith and Blair – moved to take away the directive power of the conference and the various trade union bodies that were associated with making a big input so as to make an elected Labour Government virtually autonomous. And, as we’ve seen since, Labour was elected in 1997, effectively autonomous.

QUENTIN DEMPSTER: So, that’s what’s gonna happen here, isn’t it?

RODNEY CAVALIER: I think something like that has been happening in a de facto way.

The ALP Pledge referred to could be for the ”democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields”.  And the Liberals need to modernise? Although Dempster is more likely referring to the following ALP membership pledge: “I will forfeit my membership if I nominate against any endorsed Labor candidate.” So in other words, if the unions do not support Iemma and his Government who do they support? The unions cannot nominate against an endorsed ALP candidate as means to stop the privatisation and still be in good standing with the ALP, and with the withering of the union’s ALP conference power they are really stuck.