Mark Latham's new direction for the ALP's policy future

The cover of Mark Latham's new book

An excerpt of 'From the Suburbs: Building a Nation from our Neighbourhoods'(2003)

Introduction

Some things never change in Australian politics. When Labor is in Opposition there is always a great debate about our direction and policies. This was true of the Curtin Opposition in the 1930s, Whitlam in the 1960s and Hayden in the 1980s.

In one respect, this is not surprising. People have high expectations about Labor, the party of reform and progressive ideas. No one ever expects the Coalition to do much - they just preside, preen themselves and put the country to sleep.

The weight is always on Labor to do things. That's why people are keen to know what we stand for. From The Suburbs takes up this challenge, from an outer suburban perspective. It uses issues and insights from my electorate of Werriwa, in Sydney's south-west, to advocate new Labor policies.

Most of Australia's political debate comes from the inner city, from people living in a tiny part of Sydney and Melbourne. This tends to be an artificial process, conducted under the guise of an ideological struggle between Left and Right.

In reality, it is a self-serving contest between political insiders: powerful people from both sides of the ideological fence who are reluctant to transfer influence and control to other citizens. There are many examples of this phenomenon - in the media, the corporate sector, the bureaucracy and parliament itself.

In Part 3, I give my favourite example: the case of Phillip Adams and Piers Akerman, two of Australia's best-known newspaper columnists. They claim to be poles apart politically, articulating different values and beliefs. In practice, however, they are two sides of the same coin.
Both are political insiders, part of the media elite, living in the affluent inner-Sydney enclave of Paddington. They have little experience of suburban life and suburban values. Both practise a symbolic and abstract style of politics, based on the concentration of power and the preservation of the ruling elite.

Elitism, whether in the form of a Left-leaning cultural elite or the old Right-wing establishment, is unacceptable.

We need more politics and policies from the suburbs.

This book embraces a different set of values from that of Paddington-Piers-Phil. It advocates the decentralisation of control, the transfer of assets and opportunities to people outside the social centre. This approach is long overdue in Australian politics. I believe it answers the pressing question of our time: what should Labor now stand for?
We should be anti-establishment, breaking down the concentration of power across the political spectrum. This is the new dividing line in public life. It is not a question of Left versus Right, but a struggle between insiders and outsiders.

Too much influence in our society is concentrated in the hands of insiders. Labor's historic mission is to empower the outsiders, to fight for the underdog. With the rise of economic globalisation, our role has become more important. Too much power is concentrated in the boardrooms of big corporations.

In recent times these companies have won many more rights, particularly the rights of free trade and investment. But in return, they have been reluctant to discharge their proper social responsibilities. The obscene level of executive salaries in Australia is just one sign of corporate irresponsibility and corporate greed.

This is why competition must be at the core of Labor's economic values. The corporate elite must be made to compete against each other. The business executives who want government to cut social welfare for the poor cannot expect large dollops of industry welfare for themselves.
Labor can be pro-market without necessarily being pro-business. We must impose higher levels of corporate social responsibility in this country. We also need to reduce the shocking level of asset inequality.

The top 20 percent of Australian households own 65 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 20 percent owns nothing at all. The Howard Government has no strategy or policies to end this imbalance. In fact, it never mentions poverty as an issue.

Under Howard, the old boys' club is back in town. The power elite in Sydney and Melbourne has the luxury of buying an expensive education and business opportunities for the next generation. This is why the insiders' network is so strong - its members look after each other with appointments and preferment. Too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people.

This is reflected in the Government's appointments to Australia's major cultural institution, the ABC. The Prime Minister's best mate is Donald McDonald, so Howard made him Chairman of the ABC. Peter Costello's best mate is Michael Kroger, so he put him on the Board. If Tony Abbott had any mates they'd be on the Board of the ABC as well.
Public culture has become an important public issue. Globalisation is not just an economic event. It also challenges our sense of social stability and cultural identity. This can be seen in the Americanisation of the media, the mass movement of people across the globe, plus the internationalisation of crime.

Not surprisingly, people want to take greater control of their lives, to reclaim a sense of identity and community. This means having a bigger say in the decisions of government. The electorate wants to be heard, not just listened to.

This isn't happening under the current Government. Even Liberal backbenchers concede that the Prime Minister's first instincts are authoritarian. His preferred form of government is a one-man-band, a real insider's job.
Look at his record on democratic reform. No independent Speaker of the House of Representatives. No reform of the parliament and its committee system. No community cabinet meetings that consult with people outside Canberra. No experiments with Internet democracy. No democratisation of our cultural institutions. And no Australian Republic, let alone a Republic with a democratically elected (that is, a directly elected) President.

Under Howard, political power is concentrated in the hands of the few, not the many. Labor's task is to flatten this hierarchical system and to dissolve the power elite. Our role is to re-empower the outsiders, to transfer income and influence to the vast suburbs and regions of the nation.
Wherever power and privilege are concentrated - whether in big business, high society or big bureaucracies - we need to be anti-establishment. The outsiders want us to shake the tree, to rattle the cage on their behalf. They want us to be less respectable and less orthodox, to break down the powerful centre of society.

This is the key to preserving Labor's unique culture. After all, we have never been just a political party. We're a movement - a movement that needs to energise its base and create new causes and new constituencies.
Paul Keating said it was like pedalling a bicycle. Let me take the analogy further. When a bike starts moving it wobbles from side to side. The rider then has a choice: to stop the bike or to pedal faster. I'm a great believer in always pedalling faster.

In many parts of the world, Left-of-Centre parties have got the wobbles. With the fall of the Berlin Wall we've had trouble redefining ourselves, nourishing our supporters with a sense of energy and movement. It's not just a challenge for the Australian Labor Party (ALP). It's an international dilemma.

The new Labor cause involves the radical extension of economic, social and political democracy. The downside to globalisation is the concentration of power, the entrenchment of an arrogant and self-serving group of insiders.

Our job is to give them hell. That's what modern politics is all about: the distribution of power in our economic and cultural institutions. It is fundamental to the revitalisation of Labor.

Some, of course, will say that this approach is too parochial, anchored too deeply in the needs of an outer-suburban constituency. I make no apology for that. In fact, I wear it as a badge of honour. Labor is strongest when it meets the needs and aspirations of outsiders. Indeed, political history tells us that the ALP cannot win government unless we win the outer suburbs.
From The Suburbs is not only parochial. It is also personal.

Every day I learn new lessons from the communities I represent. Over time, I have tried to turn them into new ideas and policies for the ALP. If social justice is to be relevant to the circumstances of disadvantaged people, it must be relevant to the needs of the outer suburbs. This is the passion that got me into public life. It is the passion that keeps me there.

I grew up in a suburb (a public housing estate) where, by definition, nobody owned economic assets and the only real opportunity in life came through public education. Today I represent neighbourhoods with unemployment rates of 40 percent and welfare dependency rates of 80 percent - places where, almost certainly, nobody will inherit anything. These days, the next generation cannot even get a good education.

Yet in the parliament, I look across at the likes of Alexander Downer and Tony Abbott - Tories who inherited everything. So don't tell me society is fair. And don't tell me that Labor has nothing to fight for. We have a huge amount of work to do.

I trust that this book makes a contribution. It brings together a number of my speeches and papers since 2001, first as a Federal backbencher and now, as the Shadow Minister for Economic Ownership, Housing, Urban Development and Community Security in Simon Crean's Opposition.
Part 1 outlines the new culture war in Australian politics, the growing battle between insiders and outsiders. Part 2 looks at the public policy consequences of this struggle; in particular, at the need for Labor to develop new economic, welfare and urban programs. Part 3 aims the spotlight on our political opponents, the ultimate insiders in Australian politics: the Liberal Party and its 'dancing bears' in the Tory media.

Finally, I wish to thank Tony Moore and Sean Kidney from Pluto Press/Social Change for suggesting this book and then, more importantly, having the enthusiasm and faith to see it through. Without their involvement in Australian public life, even fewer ideas and advocates would emerge from the suburbs.