Senator Andrew Bartlett
Friday, October 15, 2004
 
It’s a sign of how things can change over time that I find myself drawing attention to something on the Crikey website. I always used to abhor those people as seemingly willing to spread any piece of nonsensical and offensive gossip just for the malicious pleasure of it.

Whilst they are still prone to taking regular cheap shots, these days they don’t seem much more prone to it than plenty of other media and their obsession with prurient and titillating gossip seems to have diminished. It’s still there occasionally, but again no more common than on some other media outlets.

(As an aside, despite being very disappointed at John Howard’s strong re-election, I did find myself mildly pleased that Trish Draper survived in her seat – I thought she was subject to some appalling, unfair and vicious gossip-mongering, dressed up as ‘public interest’, earlier this year.)

Anyway, Crikey has an interesting debate about possible reform of the Labor Party. It may seem strange for me to be interested in this when my own party clearly has some far bigger challenges to face about where it goes from here. However, I have always had a strong feeling that the Labor Party – and the Union movement – would both benefit from severing, or dramatically reducing their organisational links.

Whilst there were no doubt good historical reasons for these links, I think each does the other a disservice these days. Any organisation or movement that ties itself too strongly to a political party is harming itself in the long run and reducing its opportunities to be effective. It’s the same reason why I think many environment groups have made a bad mistake (for the environment’s sake) in aligning themselves so blatantly with the Greens and now to the ALP.

I’m not anti-union (as the Democrats’ Senate record shows) and I think many unions play a vital role in keeping civil society a lot stronger than it otherwise would be, but I just have a feeling that staying linked so strongly to the ALP – and vice versa – is doing the unions ongoing damage.

I found it interesting to see what seems to be a strong debate along similar lines on the Crikey site following on from the election. Check out the views here http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2004/10/14-0010.html if you’re interested.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, October 15, 2004
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