Comment by @ndy

April 9, 2008 @ 10:57 pm

bah humbug. my home at anarchobase has been withdrawn as a result of legal threats being made against me by the litigious folks at mathaba.net. you can read the offending post at my new/old blog. i’ll be back with a new blog addy by the end of the week, but in the meantime, some publicity would be nice…

cheers,

@ndy.

Comment by Bob Gould

May 4, 2008 @ 12:00 am

The conference of the NSW branch of the Australian Labor Party today overwhelmingly rejected the Labor government’s proposal to sell off the state’s electricity network. This is a major victory following a long and effective campaign by most trade unions, the Labor Party ranks, the Greens and other community organisations.

The battle is not over, as the government has said it will defy the conference. Much will defend on a vote of the Labor parliamentary caucus on Tuesday.

Bob Gould’s report

Comment by Captain Swing

May 4, 2008 @ 4:49 pm

One pissed-off ALP Conference delegate told me that the ALP Left Executive knew about the need to give sufficient written notice if they wanted to change the party platform on privatisation or anything else, but the Union Secretaries did nothing about laying this essential mechanical foundation to bind the Party & its parliamentarians. That’s perhaps one reason why the vote was so overwhelming – because it didn’t bind the Caucus members, becoming a pure ‘policy’ motion only and thus not technically binding on the Government.

If Conference had succeeded in changing the platform, Iemma & Costa would then have been acting directly contrary to the platform on electricity privatisation, thus stiffening the backs of Caucus members inclined to vote against it next week. Iemma and Costa  would have been stuffed, but of course the ‘loyal union secretaries’ had to leave the Terrigals a way out, didn’t they? Had to be seen to be fighting, but did not really want to win.

They did this (sit on their hands re: giving notice) presumably because they thought they could negotiate a ‘deal’ on privatisation with the saner members of Cabinet i.e. sans Costa before the Conference, or at it. This was certainly a possibility as late as Thursday night I understand, when the ‘deal’ story was run in the Daily Terror. Costa apparently angrily rejected the thought of any compromise, at a meeting attended by the Premier, who remained silent during the Costa tirade, I am told.

As to the outcome of all this – what if the Liberals voted in favour of privatisation in both houses of parliament? They’ll sniff the wind and vote it down I think, as it seems to be very unpopular - so that leaves the Greens, Shooters and the Nile Team in the Upper House to vote it down. The Greens and the Shooters might well be enough to see its end, if the Libs also block it - I imagine the Govt would have to amend the SOC’s Act and other sundry legislation to get the privatisation through, so there will be a parliamentary vote.

CAPTAIN SWING’S REPORT ( ask Bob who Captain Swing was, he’ll have the book in his shop, by Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude).  

Comment by Bob Gould

May 5, 2008 @ 9:42 am

Bob Gould’s report on the  second day of the Labor conference.

Comment by Ablokeimet

May 5, 2008 @ 10:56 pm

Well, this Anarchist is impressed.  I’ve been watching the campaign from the distance of Melbourne, though with a source or two in N.S.W.  Bob’s analogy with the 1950s is not bad, but there’s a better one.  What we’ve witnessed is the sort of thing that happened during the 1917 split over conscription.

The rank & file of the Party and affiliated unions, using their (often flawed) democratic processes, have given the Party tops a defeat over something both think non-negotiable.  In the process, the traditional machine operatives of the Party were placed in an unusual position.  They were squeezed between the pressures of the membership and the Government until they had to declare a side – and, faced with the virtually unanimous fury of the ranks, they caved in to the membership.

What we’ve seen is a massive movement of the working class.  True, it hasn’t been over the sort of issue that capital R revolutionaries like me would have expected, and the position taken up by the A.L.P. Conference is itself open to great criticism, but these issues are secondary.  The workers of N.S.W. have drawn a line in the sand.  They have said, “No matter whether we agree with how far you’ve taken us already, we’re not letting you go any further.”

The question now is “What next?”  As Bob notes, the next battle is in Caucus.  What must happen now is that the Party, having declared its position, states that anyone who votes against the Platform is a rat and will be expelled.  This will put maximum pressure on wavering Caucus members, to force them to decide that the path which results in least damage is to keep the “Cabinet rump” as small as possible.

It’s theoretically possible that Iemma could lose in Caucus and still get the privatisation through Parliament.  If he & Costa can round up enough rats, the Libs could swing the vote his way.  I’m not privy to the thinking of the open representatives of big business, however, so I won’t predict which way they’ll jump. 

This battle probably counts as justification for Bob Gould’s half-century in the Labor Party.  It’s the exception rather than the rule, however, so there’s no way I’ll be following suit (if it was the rule, I’d have to re-examine my Anarchism critically).   I’ve learnt the evils of sectarianism  well enough, however, to  know that when someone in the A.L.P. stands up for the right thing, we need to support them on that issue.  So hats off to Bob, for fighting the good fight, and to all the other Labor Party members who said “No pasaran”.

Comment by Tom O\\Lincoln

May 6, 2008 @ 8:37 am

“What we’ve seen is a massive movement of the working class.”

I’m also impressed with what’s happened in NSW, but if we are going to talk about a “massive movement of the working class“, rather than a mobilisation of party activists and union officials, that would need to manifest itself in the streets and in industry. Just such a movement is probably still needed to stop Iemma’s privatisation plans.

Comment by Bob Gould

May 6, 2008 @ 9:02 am

Meeting. The Labor Party rank and file committee opposing privatisation, which has been organising pretty effectively since January, will hold an open meeting to which the public are invited on Wednesday May 7, 6pm, Tom Mann Theatre, 136 Chalmers St Surry Hills, for all who are interested in discussing the further development of the campaign against privatisation.

Bob Gould’s latest on the conference and its aftermath

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May 6, 2008 @ 3:09 pm

[...] There’ve been a few comments on Leftwrites about the electricity privatisation struggle. Ablokeimet obviously has some serious understanding of the history of the Australian labour movement and some [...]

Comment by @ndy

May 7, 2008 @ 10:05 pm

Sorry for above post. Nothing to do with Labor ‘democracy’ or Cabinet ‘solidarity’. Was made because at time Bob’s post was most recent. Now I’m back bah humbug. And Labor Caucus supports privatisation. So, what now, indeed.

Premier makes mugs of unions

Imre Salusinsky

The Australian

May 7, 2008

IN case the NSW union leadership is wondering exactly what has happened over the past 48 hours – and it would be easy to understand why they would – here it is in a nutshell.

Brothers, Morris Iemma has played you for mugs.

In caucus yesterday, the five-month campaign by the unions and their proxies to force Iemma to abandon electricity privatisation, or resign, ended not with a bang but a whimper.

Following Iemma’s decision to stare down Labor’s state conference, caucus was the last avenue for payback by his opponents. Well, the yellow protest T-shirts they wore to conference proved portentous: the Premier’s opponents went yellow yesterday.

Iemma and the top three members of his parliamentary team, including Treasurer Michael Costa, meet today with five party and union representatives for further talks on the shape of the privatisation. But Iemma’s hand has been hugely strengthened.

The optics tell it all: rather than attending on party and union bosses at Sussex Street, Iemma will grant them an audience at Parliament House.

Not today, but eventually, he will throw the other side a morsel. It could be, for example, that the Government will retain a half stake, temporarily, in one of the new entities created out of the three state-owned retailers and three state-owned generators.

The unions had better be content with that, because their strategic miscalculations over this issue have been beyond belief.

Their initial mistake was making the issue one of Iemma’s leadership. Here they committed a cardinal sin of NSW politics: they didn’t do their numbers. Threats of industrial action have only made matters worse.

Ever watchful, yesterday Iemma closed the trap.

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