Yesterday Barry O'Farrell delivered the last rites to the NSW Government. Some conventional wisdom peddlers will state that the loss is due to natural political cycles. But as Luke Foley said on the ABC on election night: this is more than a conventional political cycle. A conventional political cycle would see Labor lose an election (like Victoria), not be completely annihilated like this.
There's a risk that this loss will prove to be structurally damaging to the Labor Party in NSW.
For starters, there's the lack of Labor MP's. This makes opposition more difficult, when nearly the entire parliamentary delegation will have to be shadow ministers.
Secondly, the Sussex Street Centre Unity machine that NSW Labor nurtured for over seventy years has been severely weakened by the events of the past 4 years. It may yet implode on itself. This would be a good thing. But until this machine is replaced by something else, there are some rocky roads ahead.
How did this all happen? It's true that much of the damage was self-inflicted. It's also true that Barry O'Farrell is a very underestimated politician. But before we touch on those things, it's important to understand a bit of history.
The NSW Labor Machine
NSW Labor has been in government for about 50 of the last 70 years. This is not an accident. It has consciously nurtured structural bases of power in NSW over many decades, both electoral power and money power.
Over long periods of government in office, NSW Labor has built up a large amount of connections in the public service. Departmental heads, senior advisors, and board directors of state-owned enterprises are often linked to the ALP in NSW. On Insiders on Sunday morning, Gerard Henderson called it a "Mates-ocracy". At the liberal party's campaign launch, Tony Abbott called it a "stinking patronage machine". Few within the party would disagree with this, especially those on the ALP Left.
So what exactly is this machine? It's simple - the ALP machine is an electoral coalition of right wing mates backed by powerful stakeholders. At various stages over the last 70 years, the NSW ALP has had backing from the Catholic Church, the Clubs industry, the Hotels Association, the gambling industry, the racing industry, property developers, real estate agents, and many other sections of the business community. It has also had the institutional backing of Unions, particularly right wing unions like the TWU, SDA, HSU and AWU.
The NSW Labor party has also been wise to seek out the support of many migrant communities in Sydney, to join their electoral coalition. In the western suburbs of Sydney, NSW Labor was able to tap into the concerns of migrants and bring them into its base.
People associated with many of the above groups belong to the Centre Unity faction - also known as the NSW Right. This is the faction that has had the numbers in NSW for a long time. It's no secret how it works. The aforementioned groups provide money, people, and votes - all of which the ALP uses to get itself re-elected. In return, the ALP passes policies friendly to these groups. To think anything else is completely naive. It's a 21st century Tammany Hall.
It's easy to see, with such a huge amount of institutional backing, how NSW Labor became the best resourced, most effective political machine in the country, delivering itself power over and over again.
The only problem has been this - Centre Unity is itself now an unstable political machine, struggling to justify its existence in the 21st century. It's malaise has been the Labor Party's malaise.
Decline of the NSW Right?
The NSW Right is being pulled in several directions, to such an extent that it doesn't know what it stands for any more.
Sixty years ago the faction did have a clear purpose - to oppose communist influence in trade unions, and to propose moderate, electorally successful (although still distinctly Labor) policies - as a way of keeping out liberal governments that would attack unions, Catholics, and later migrants. In other words, Centre Unity was the political coalition that opposed commies on the left and conservatives on the right.
But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, much of this reason for existence was undermined. A large debate then went on about what the right should stand for. Some wanted it to be more socially progressive, especially in its younger ranks. This rankled with old-school Catholics and many migrant groups, who correctly judge the political values of their communities as more conservative, and say that the party must accommodate and reflect those views in order to maintain its structural advantage.
People like Michael Costa wanted to turn the faction into the country's biggest cheerleader of neoliberalism. This doesn't sit well with the union movement, who know that it's generally their union members who lose out. It also clashes with the views of Labor's base working class voters. Unions themselves don't want to give up their power because they fear what a non-union dominated Labor party would look like.
And then of course - the stinking patronage machine. Big donors want to continue to have access and influence in order to make money. Property developers in particular. This clashes with the Labor party's progressive beliefs about big monied interests.
Where is the NSW Right faction now?
Most NSW Right faction leaders want the faction to continue to run the party with scant regard to the health of its grassroots. This clashes with the modern view of campaigning found in the Labor Party's 2010 National Review, which identifies the importance of community organising, local engagement, and involving rank and file Labor supporters in party decision making as much as possible.
In the absence of ideas or one clear and consistent direction, the faction merely acts as a soulless factional patronage machine without any clear ideology. It gets wheeled out at election time to raise funds and run attack ads. Then it disappears for a few years, quietly dishing out favours to mates and picking up a few barnacles as it sails aimlessly onward.
Because it doesn't know what it stands for (and it's not a machine with deep community links), the faction has to ask focus groups to figure out what to say. This would be softened somewhat if there was a stronger ALP Left faction. But sadly, the left is on the decline too - bleeding volunteers and young people to The Greens.
It's clear that this can't go on. Now that the ALP is out of government, it can't rely on big donors any more. It must rely on a grassroots base. But the ALP has been a party without members for many years now, due to Centre Unity's iron fist.
Now that its tentacles of influence have been removed from government and other power bases in NSW, the faction is going to seriously struggle. And rightly so! There's no point persisting with a political machine unable to justify its existence in 2011. The machine has lived well past its use-by date, despite what some of the hacks will try to say. Anyone who tries to defend it is on the wrong side of history.
Barry O'Farrell is underestimated
Barry O'Farrell understands much of the above. O'Farrell understands that his ability to run a long term government depends on his ability to keep key stakeholders on his side, while undermining any other structural support bases for Labor. Everything he's done over the past 4 years as opposition leader can be viewed through one prism: O'Farrell has maximised political damage to the ALP at any possible opportunity.
Going back to 2008 - he took a highly unprincipled decision (from a liberal point of view) to oppose the sale of electricity assets. He was highly criticised for that decision by many conservatives, but there can be little doubt that O'Farrell's decision ruined the political careers of Michael Costa and Morris Iemma. It also fatally weakened the state government, which never recovered in polling.
Since 2008, the Coalition has done some quiet, but very hard work getting key stakeholders on the coalitions side. Property developers sent a lot of money supporting the National Party, as did the clubs industry and racing industry. Even got the NRL on side back in December. One of his first acts as premier may be to beef up donations laws to more greatly restrict election spending by unions.
Most smartly of all, he moved to detoxify the liberal party's image in western sydney that it only stuck up for racist rednecks, or white men in pinstripe suits. Moderate candidates with local migrant backgrounds were preselected, like Tony Issa and Dai Le. O'Farrell went wining and dining with many migrant communities and asked for their support. He consciously tried to distance the state liberal brand from the federal liberal party (and ALP), and it worked. He was also assisted in this task by federal Labor's abandonment of multiculturalism at the last federal election.
The liberals have finally realised that some migrant groups are conservative, and would ordinarily vote liberal on their values if the ALP hadn't stuck up for multiculturalism. John Howard and Pauline Hanson drove many of these voters away from right wing politics - Barry has won some of them back.
Barry O'Farrell won the election by doing exactly the same thing NSW Labor has done over the years. Appear moderate. Win key stakeholders. Appeal to Sydney's large migrant community. Run negative campaigns against your opponent. It's not the most original strategy for winning government, but it's highly effective, and it worked.
The people left voting for Labor are people who truly do rely on Labor - poorer workers, unionists, public housing tenants, some migrants and the long term unemployed. Basically everyone else went to the liberal party.
Where to from here?
The election result was a catastrophe but it will allow once and for all for a debate about party reform to be had. John Robertson is likely to be made leader - he comes from a working class union background, and he understands grassroots campaigning in and out. In 2007 he and Adam Kerslake co-ordinated the Your Rights at Work campaign in NSW. He will hopefully understand the need for change. On the other hand, he will be in debt to the right wing machine that gave him his upper house spot, arranged for him to be made the candidate in Blacktown, and then sent every right wing hack and unionist in NSW to go and campaign for him.
He will not automatically do the right thing any more than Sussex Street or the other leadership candidiates. He must be forced to do it like everyone else.
On a broader point, Labor must soon make a choice about its future direction. Does it want to win the next election by doing what O'Farrell did, rebulding the lost political machine, the patronage network? I argue that now is the time when we can replace the rotten machine with something better.
We must reform and grow as a grassroots organisation
Now that Labor is out of power right across Sydney and NSW, it needs to rebuild a grassroots campaign network capable of running a huge grassroots campaign in every seat. That's not just hard, it's necessary. Labor only has about 20 seats. You need 47 to form government. That's a lot of seats we need to win back, and not a lot of money or people to do it with.
It's not a coincidence that some of the best ALP results in 2011 came in places where an active campaign was run with many volunteers. Huge Labor campaigns in Marrickville, Maroubra, Toongabbie, Wallsend, Granville and Blacktown helped Labor win seats or at least keep the swing lower. The same thing happened at the federal election in seats like Robertson and Lindsay, which saved the Gillard government.
This sort of saturation campaigning on the ground actually works - but it was only made possible because the party strictly prioritised where to send it's already thinning membership base to campaign. Everywhere else had no campaign at all, and the consequences of that were obvious. Bathurst swung over 30%. Parramatta by 29%. Resources were pulled from these seats ages ago, because there just wasn't enough money or volunteers to go around.
There's only one solution - more people. In particular, more ALP members. It's not enough to wheel out a whole bunch of Union Organisers at election time to run around marginal seats. That's a failure in itself, because it's an admission that we have nobody in the community. We must have a local community presence or we'll be dead.
If we're to be a grassroots movement, we have to actually address the real reasons people don't join the ALP and/or stick around. These come back to rules, the National Review 2010, and the way the NSW has run the party with an iron fist - crushing democracy and crushing hopes for a more progressive Labor party. These are the elephants in the room, and all players must recognise them.
The Sussex Street machine will no doubt attempt to cling on to its structural control of the party. It will propose some reforms, but none that threaten its control. Power is never given - it must be taken. This will require a grassroots campaign in itself - the left must be active and it must grow. Otherwise decisions will be taken without its input, and nothing will change.
Real change means the National Review 2010 being implemented in full, as a bare minimum. Preselection powers should be returned fully to membership, and Sussex Street should give up its veto. Members of the executive and conference delegations must all be elected. Without these things, people will still see no value in getting involved. Labor is supposed to be a party that believes in social democracy, but it's probably the least democratic political party of its type in the world.
Once this is done, the next step will be to regain local councils in NSW. There are council elections in NSW next year, and that will be a good opportunity for the party to come up with a consistent local government agenda that can be campaigned on at the grassroots in local communities. That can be a way we can re-engage people to get involved. That will be the key to oppose the likely liberal and national party orgy on some issues around local government matters.
There's also a practical reason for this - the next council elections after that won't be until 2016. With an O'Farrell re-election likely in 2015, (plus a possible Gillard defeat somewhere before then), that's five solid years in the doghouse in NSW. That amount of time spent out of any public office will be enormously damaging to the party and, perhaps, the state.
After council elections, we should do as Sam Dastyari proposed, and exploit some of the ideas the coalition have, like petitions to parliament to trigger parliamentary debates. Those would be great ways to assist the parliamentary labor party to set the agenda, despite its low amount of numbers.
To do all of this, we have to go back to our political roots - standing up for workers rights, cost of living issues, public services, and local community concerns. We can't do this without reform and fast change. It will be tough to regain credibility that quickly - it requires a real Clause IV moment, followed by a fundamental change in the way things are run. John Robertson may be the person to do this, but grassroots pressure still needs to be there from below to make it a reality.
There's a lot of work to do, and this moment seems dark. But this is an opportunity as much as a threat, to create something more hopeful out of the ashes. It need not be a Blue South Wales for long if we force our way down the right path.
