Bill Shorten, whose reluctance to confront systemic problems within the Australian Labor Party looks more glaring with each passing week, is reportedly about to deliver a major speech outlining significant organizational reform. Indications are that he wants to ease membership restrictions (including a requirement that party members also belong to a union), ensure that rank and file member are given a greater say in the preselection of MPs, including senators, and press the states and territories to adopt the same leadership elections model as the federal party, ie, giving rank and file members an equal say with parliamentary caucuses.
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It’s no exaggeration to suggest that reaction within the party to Mr Shorten’s reform – and whether he has the intestinal fortitude to seem them through – will determine how long he retains the federal Labor leadership.
There are already ominous signs that the electorate is losing patience with Labor. The party ceded power to the Liberals in Tasmania last month, retained it in South Australia only because of a quirk in the state-wide distribution of seats, and received only 21.7 per cent of the primary vote at the April 5 Senate re-election in WA. Earlier this week, a Fairfax/Nielsen poll showed Labor’s share of the primary vote had slipped back to 34 per cent after having reaching 37 per cent in the days following Mr Shorten election as party leader. And the opening of the royal commission into union corruption last week will probably ensure ongoing revelations of extortion, bribery and fraud perpetrated by and on behalf of the movement with which the Labor Party has been inextricably bound since the 1890s.
So well-entrenched are those ties, and so reluctant are the unions to give up the power they presently wield – which includes the ability to drive policy, dictate preselections in the Senate and make or break party leaders – that many doubt they will allow anything other than modest reforms. Mr Shorten’s proposals are far from revolutionary, which just emphasises how much he is in thrall to the right-wing unions that backed his leadership bid.
As a former union leader with a fairly dull public persona, Mr Shorten may not be the man for the job to distance the party from the unions. As it is, the party will probably procrastinate and obfuscate in the expectation that its stocks will rise when the electorate eventually tires of the Coalition. But Mr Shorten would be well aware that by the time Labor does return to favour it will be by default only, and that it is unlikely he will still be leader. For the party’s sake as well as his own, Mr Shorten must not shrink from the challenge of distancing Labor from the unions.
Vandalism aimed to intimidate
Sometime on Sunday night, vandals broke into the well-protected Monash premises of the Canberra Islamic Centre, sprayed expletives on the walls, trashed a kitchen, dining hall and a library containing hundreds of books, and poured kerosene everywhere. Centre president Azra Kahn summed up the stunned reaction of worshippers when she said: “We’re appalled something like this could happen here. I would have thought a peaceful place like Canberra should have these things happen time and time again’’.
Peaceful and law-abiding though Canberra normally is, it is still subject to episodes of vandalism. Most of it is of a random nature, and usually perpetrated by bored and not particularly bright youths. The damage inflicted on the Canberra Islamic Centre at the weekend was of another order, however, seemingly intended to shock as well as to intimidate. The distress, hurt and outrage felt by Muslims at this affront is something that worshippers of all denominations will share – and condemn.
