A major paradox

Dear Editor,

Neal Blewett’s review of The Latham Diaries, Annabel Crabb’s Losing It and Bernard Lagan’s Loner (ABR, November 2005) is masterly. But there is a major paradox which he does not address, nor do the three books reviewed: that is, why the ALP, despite small membership and the entrenched feudal structure of the factions, holds eight of Australia’s nine elected governments. All have solid majorities, and none seems to be at risk of losing. The conventional wisdom in the commentariat is that the ALP, with its eight governments, is in bad shape, while the Coalition, which holds just one, is in great shape. It is an odd assessment.

There is a second unexamined issue: the striking discrepancy between the way people vote at national or state elections in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. In Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT, and NT, Labor polls a plurality of votes both in national and state/territory elections. The discrepancy is particularly striking in Queensland where the Liberal Party holds sixty per cent of the state’s House of Representative seats, but only a derisory six per cent of seats in the Legislative Assembly.

Federal Election (October 2004)

Liberals: 39.4%     17 seats

NPA: 9.7%            4 seats

ALP: 34.8%           6 seats

State Election (February 2004)

Liberals: 18.5%     5 seats

NPA: 17.0%          15 seats

ALP: 47.0%           63 seats

It is worth noting that Labor’s losing primary vote under Mark Latham in 2004 (37.6 per cent) was higher than New Labour’s winning primary vote under Tony Blair (thirty-seven per cent) in 2005.

Despite some problems with our primary vote in 2001 and 2004, the two-party preferred vote, while volatile, currently puts us in a winning position in AgePoll, Newspoll, and Morgan Poll.

The basic challenge for the ALP is this: in a dynamic, expanding nation, can a party with a contracting base win power? The answer is, yes. It already happens with the states and territories. To be sure of winning nationally, the ALP must engage with the larger community and build bridges to it.

Labor can win in 2007 if it persuades people who split their votes in 2004 to support the ALP nationally. There are strategic differences about this approach. Some party thinkers believe that the electorate has moved so far to the right that Labor can only win by outflanking John Howard with a conservative agenda. Others argue that Labor must create its own agenda, a commitment to radical reform, courage and generosity, fighting against the pervasive (and corrosive) climate of fear.

The party must be inclusive, not exclusive, and needs to stitch up coalitions of support. My analysis of the 2004 election was described by Mark Latham as expressing a ‘left’ position and genially dismissed as ‘horseshit’. He was wrong on both counts. I was not advancing an ‘either/or’ proposition – that Labor could either campaign on a domestic economic agenda or advance a moral agenda. I argued an ‘as well as’ proposition, that political parties need to stitch up coalitions of support on a variety of issues. The ALP can do more than one thing at once – ‘to walk and chew gum’, as Lyndon Johnson said. Labor should adopt an ‘inclusivist’ approach, finding common ground between voters who are preoccupied with an economic agenda and those who are concerned with the state of the planet and worry about the issues of race, war, violence, tolerance, and environment. There are dangers in an ‘exclusionist’ approach which rejects the support of voters who may take a more radical view about society and the world than the current Opposition leadership does. Even if these dissenters accounted for only five or ten per cent of the total vote, logic and arithmetic confirm that it would have been better to win their primary votes for Labor. I suspect that many of the dissenters contributed to a disturbingly high informal vote (5.2 per cent nationwide, and more than ten per cent in some safe ALP seats).

Voters will recognise and reward courage, but they despise evasion. Peter Andren, an independent who took a courageous line on refugees, won 71.2 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in Calare. In the US, Senator Russell Feingold, the only senator to oppose the Patriot Act (2002) and who voted against every appropriation for the Iraq War, was re-elected in 2004 with fifty-six per cent of the vote in Wisconsin, while, in the presidential race, John Kerry only won a narrow victory (fifty per cent) in that state.

There is no single stereotype of a Labor voter. Commitment to Labor involves a complex mix of economic, ideological, historical, even tribal factors. An issue such as the death penalty, for example, was a major factor in recruiting to the ALP figures as diverse as Peter Walsh, Steve Bracks, the late Jim Bacon, and Shadow Minister for Immigration Tony Burke. Some commentators would regard capital punishment as a peripheral issue, others as a core belief. Did anyone join us because we sold Qantas or were silent on Tampa or David Hicks? Labor has shown courage on the issue of industrial relations – and the community has responded, even people who are not unionised. I believe that voters will recognise and reward courage and we should attempt to show more of it.

The day after Latham’s election as leader, Greg Craven wrote a very perceptive analysis in The Age (4 December 2003), comparing Latham’s style to Jeff Kennett’s. He argued that to Latham all politics was essentially autobiographical. When Latham spoke from his own experience – growing up in Sydney’s western suburbs, being a father, reading to children, fighting a cancer scare, engaging with communities, sport – he could be very compelling. But there were too many issues in which he had little knowledge, experience or interest – such as foreign policy, the arts, the gender gap, multiculturalism, environment, industrial relations, research, law reform, agriculture, trade – where his lack of empathy was palpable. On refugees, he was Hansonite, as The Latham Diaries confirm. Howard and Philip Ruddock were bleeding hearts by comparison.

Barry Jones, Melbourne, Vic.

The awesome task

Dear Editor,

Neal Blewett (ABR, November 2005) rightly uses the word ‘important’ to describe The Latham Diaries, and he does a pretty good job of explaining why. It’s the first lengthy review based on some quiet reflection. Too many commentaries were written by journalists and others who hadn’t read the book. So they wrote about the leaks of scuttlebutt, rancour, the slurs and innuendoes, rather than the analysis and the argument.

Blewett makes a point about the deadening influence of the ‘small-target’ (no policies) strategy, that seems to have dominated federal Labor’s thinking in Opposition until 2004. It was a time when it became increasingly difficult for ALP members (and the community) to understand what Labor stood for. Its most pernicious consequence was that the party, as an institution, fell out of the habit of policy formulation. Mark Latham was almost alone, beavering away at policy analysis and writing about it: ‘A one-man think-tank.’ As Blewett writes, ‘No one had so fully grasped the awesome task facing Labor.’

The awesome task remains. It is difficult to see it being tackled by a party so seemingly out of touch with the community. This is in sharp contrast to Gough Whitlam’s period as Opposition Leader in the 1960s and Bill Hayden’s in the late 1970s, when the party was much more open and receptive to ideas.

I go most of the way with Blewett when he writes that it is ‘near impossible’ for a leader in Opposition to embark on reform of what he describes as a ‘dysfunctional party’. But his comforting afterthought that ‘fortunately conservative governments can still lose elections’ is pretty horrifying. It is the underlying rationale of the small-target strategy, and an idea which should not be lightly encouraged. But both Whitlam and Hayden (setting up for Bob Hawke) made substantial structural and attitudinal reforms to the party.

Latham’s diaries have plenty of entries about the need for reform, but perhaps they were late entries. ‘Face the Facts: Labor is stuffed,’ he pronounces in a 1999 entry. This indicates the ‘closet’ nature of diaries (in time all will be revealed). In Latham’s extensive writings, during his ten years in parliament, I can’t recall anything about democratic party reform.

Would he have embarked on reform of the party if he’d remained leader and in good health? Perhaps. He was, after all, a ‘disciple’ of Whitlam and an enthusiastic exponent of the ‘Third Way’, the formula espoused by Tony Blair, whose first task as leader was a radical and tough-minded reform of his party.

There is one final point about Neal Blewett’s otherwise comprehensive review. Latham’s book is not just about the Labor Party. It is also about Australia’s political system and culture, with a punchy critique of the media. At one point, he even refers to ‘the culture wars’, which suggests he might have understood their importance to a liberal democratic society. They are important, aren’t they?

John Button, Richmond, Vic.

The ASA on ‘seditious intent’

Dear Editor,

I am the Executive Director of the Australian Society of Authors (ASA), the 3000-member peak body representing Australia’s literary creators. I write to express concern regarding the impending Anti-Terrorism Bill. The ASA is particularly concerned with the definitions of ‘seditious intent’ and with the lack of protection the term ‘good faith’ provides in defence of authors (or anyone) accused of seditious intent.

The ASA believes that the proposed Bill represents a serious challenge to the modes of expression a free and democratic society allows its writers and artists. The manner in which ‘seditious intent’ is defined, and the inadequate defence offered by ‘good faith’, is more akin to legislation prepared under the auspices of totalitarian regimes of fixed ideas and limited vision than to that usually debated by the parliament of Australia.

The ASA also notes that sedition laws were used in Australia in the 1930s and 1940s to ban books by such noted writers as George Orwell, Stephen Spender, A.L. Morton, and Arthur Koestler, and that individuals as highly regarded as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela have been charged with sedition. None of this gives us any confidence that ‘seditious intent’ offers the slightest deterrent to terrorism and those who espouse its violent philosophy.

The ASA does not believe that terrorism can be countered through the suppression of the expression of ideas. We regard the proposed sedition laws as unnecessary as current law already prohibits inciting crimes, membership and funding of terrorist organisations, and racial vilification.

Jeremy Fisher, Executive Director, Australian Society of Authors, Sydney, NSW

Australian culture at the crossroads

Dear Editor,

On behalf of the Arts Industry Council of Victoria, I call upon the federal government to remove the sedition provisions from the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2005. The proposed sedition provisions in the Bill offer no safeguards for artistic expression or for legitimate public comment and are a direct affront to democracy – which the Bill is supposedly attempting to protect. Sadly, there is too much evidence that governments that have aggressive sedition laws will use them, and will use them to restrain and silence legitimate artistic expression as well as political expression.

The government has recognised that the sedition provisions are too broad, and may not even have intended that they be so broad. You don’t even have to have any link to violence or terror to be caught up in the proposed laws. Assurances that these provisions will be reviewed once the Bill is passed are ridiculous. Competent democratic government requires ironing out major difficulties in legislation in the parliamentary review process, and not as an afterthought.

We have seen more and more calls for censorship and restraint of artistic comment in recent years, including from MPs. It is difficult to believe that these same people would exercise restraint in silencing critical expression if they had these laws at their disposal. What makes it very worrying is that the proposed sedition laws are so unnecessary, dangerous, broad and unfair. We already have laws in place to prohibit vilification, terrorist acts, and support for terrorist organisations. These provisions reverse the onus of proof, so the innocent are assumed guilty unless they can prove their innocence. The sedition provisions are a huge risk to Australian culture and Australian life with no upside.

It is not overstating it to say that Australian culture is at a crossroads. Either we entrench fear and the erosion of hard-won democratic freedoms, or we embrace our freedom and address security threats as we would other criminal acts.

Joel Becker, President, Arts Industry Council of Victoria

Breaking convention

Dear Editor,

I write regarding Jack Bradstreet’s remarks on the untitled hardcover spine of Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (Letters, ABR, November 2005). As book people, all of us at Text Publishing share his concern about content being subsidiary to packaging, so I was surprised to read a letter of such length in which The Secret River itself was a secondary concern. Between its covers lies a masterpiece.

Mr Bradstreet’s hope that we have been misquoted is well placed. The absence of embossing on the spine was not a production decision, rather a design one. We’re very proud of this book and of Chong Wengho’s magnificent design: the remarkable photo of the riverbank on the jacket; the spine framed by the Sydney Gazette; the austere confidence of the unmarked cover boards beneath; the beautiful endpapers of the 1819 Hawkesbury map within. We felt that this was a book of such distinction that we would break with convention.

Perhaps Mr Bradstreet should hang on to his copy with the naked spine. He’d be better placed than I to hazard a guess as to value, but it is the first edition of a book which will be remembered as one of the classics of Australian literature. It might fetch a bit for him one day.

Michael Williams, Text Publishing, Melbourne, Vic.

Sponsor a page

Dear Editor,

Bucketloads of good wishes to Nicholas Jose and his colleagues who are planning to publish an anthology of Australian literature (ABR, November 2005). Margaret Drabble’s Oxford Companion to English Literature has long been a source of interest and information for me, and I can hardly wait for a similar Australian publication. A lifetime of unstructured and self-directed reading of Australian literature allows me to consider myself well read, but always wanting to have the underlying literary background knowledge that would illuminate my own thoughts and critiques and assist me to recognise patterns and developments. I have begun my university Arts studies late in life and am astounded that there are almost no available dedicated Australian literature courses. The planned anthology would be invaluable to students like myself and may even be a catalyst for more courses to be created and for some out-of-print works to be republished.

If finances are an issue for publication, perhaps public sponsorship might be an answer? I would happily pay, say, $50 per head to sponsor one or two favourite authors for inclusion in the anthology. Or open an order book, and I’ll sign up for my copy now. However it happens, such a reference source is an absolute necessity for Australian literature, so that writers and readers can build on the history and continue to produce and read relevant works.

Karen Brown, Port Macquarie, NSW

The name regained

Dear Editor,

The November 2005 issue of ABR features a summary of the career of the much-admired book editor Beatrice Davis. It also mentions the achievements of the publisher and private press printer Alec Bolton, whose photograph of Davis was reproduced on the front cover.

In the article, Alec Bolton’s press was named Officina Brindabella, rather than the Brindabella Press, which was his chosen name for it. This was due to a problem of registration. In 1985, when Alec Bolton applied for registration, he discovered that a company had already registered the name Brindabella Press. So he reluctantly registered Officina Brindabella – officina being an Italian term for a printing workshop – for his press. Happily, in 1992 the earlier registration was found to have lapsed. He was able to re-register the claim, and did so with deep satisfaction. And so the name Brindabella Press remained with him in all subsequent publications. This meant a great deal to Alec Bolton.

See also: Alec Bolton’s letters to his subscribers: Brindabella Press: The Name Regained and Other News (Brindabella Press, 1992).

Rosemary Dobson Bolton, Deakin, ACT