Party Room Politics

How Politics Functions In Australia

Here’s a great article in the SMH.

Minchin argued repeatedly that Hockey’s position was ridiculous – you can’t have a policy of not having a policy, he said.
At this point,  Abbott declared his hand. ‘‘This is an impossible situation for the colleagues,’’ he said. ‘‘Some want to vote for the ETS, some want to vote against it. You can’t leave it unresolved. The party has to be offered a clear choice.’’
If Hockey would not change his mind, said Abbott, he would stand as the anti-ETS candidate.
About 8pm, Minchin visited Hockey once again. Abbott joined them. Minchin tried once more to find a way to kill the ETS but install Hockey
as leader. He offered a new formula – a secret ballot on the ETS offering three options – in favour of it, against it, or in favour of a conscience vote on it.
Hockey was ready to accept this, but Abbott would not brook anything offering a conscience vote  option.
That night, as the candidates counted their numbers, a Hockey lieutenant contacted Turnbull about 8.30pm to make sure of his undertaking to Hockey that he wouldn’t stand.
He told Hockey that he had received the assurance and had noted the conversation in his diary.
Yet Turnbull publicly vowed, in the strongest of terms, that he would standand fight.
At the Tuesday meeting, the leadership was declared vacant with a vote of 48 to 34, a clear dismissal of Turnbull.
Then  Bishop, as deputy, called for nominations for the leadership. Turnbull was on his feet instantly, followed a second later by Abbott. Hockey rose a moment later. It was to be a three-way contest.
In the first round of voting, Abbott won 35 votes, Turnbull won 26 and Hockey won 23. With the lowest tally, Hockey was eliminated.
The moderate vote had been split between Hockey and Turnbull. Some had abandoned Hockey because of his equivocal position on the threshold issue of the ETS.
Hockey was shocked.
In the run-off, Abbott beat Turnbull by 42 votes to 41. One vote, unbelievably, was informal.

The mind boggles at how all this works to serve the people of Australia. Somehow, the Liberal Party has managed to tie itself into knots where it has offered up the third best prospect at the expense of the better two, all to scuttle the ETS and that’s it. There’s nothing more on the other side but what Tony Abbott might come up with.

Long Live The DLP?

The historical DLP (as opposed to the current DLP) was a bunch of Catholics who were on the left but not left enough to embrace the Communists who were of course “Godless”. They were into spending on health, education and welfare, but totally resisted the Communists, thus supporting Australia’s participation in Vietnam.

The DLP’s policies were traditional Labor policies such as more spending on health, education and pensions, combined with strident opposition to Communism and emphasis for greater defence spending. The DLP strongly supported Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War. (For their part, the Soviet analysts would describe the Democratic Labour Party as ‘the most reactionary party in Australia’.)
From the early 1960s onwards, the DLP also became strong opponents of “permissiveness”, campaigning on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and pornography and drugs, which appealed to many conservative voters as well as the party’s base among Catholics. Some members of the DLP disagreed with this, believing the party should stay focused on anti-communism.[3]
Interestingly, the DLP achieved their highest federal vote (11.11%) with Whitlam as ALP leader at the 1970 half-senate election.
The election of the Whitlam ALP government in the 1972 election brought the DLP’s strategy of keeping the ALP out of power undone. In 1974 Whitlam appointed Gair Ambassador to Ireland in a bid to split the DLP and remove its influence. This tactic was successful and the DLP lost all its Senate seats at the 1974 election. The party was formally wound up in 1978. Soon after, a small group of supporters formed a new Democratic Labor Party, which continues to this day.
Santamaria continued to exercise considerable influence through the National Civic Council (NCC) until his death in 1998.

Its modern day ideological descendants seem to have found refuge in the hard right edge of both the ALP and the Liberal Parties. Tony Abbott, of course is famously a Catholic who once studied to be a priest and is as reactionary a they come. He even says he admired B.A Santamaria. Then there’s the NSW ALP centre-right faction which seems to be dominated by Catholics and Catholic power brokers that have brought us names such as Iemma, Tripodi, Obeid and as an extension, Keneally who seems just as loopily religious as Tony Abbott.

So I’ve been thinking in this week of party room turmoil where the DLP descendants have seized control of the parties, is the Catholic Church and the Pope of Rome making a play for Australian politics? Is this what we’re seeing? Or is this my kind of retro-Renaisance paranoia?

BTW, I’m still furious about this Kristina Keneally as NSW Premier business. It’s adverse, inverse and perverse.