Down our street, downhill into an adjoining suburb, people are not so neuter – not it people. They march in processions which shout No! – and I mustn’t look down there, or my neighbour may peep at me and I shall seem challenging democracy. He won’t speak to me again, and I won’t belong – John Blight
Backroom deals at the ALP conference
The party’s right-wing social democrats quashed Ed Husic’s motion to recognise what many people already know is the reality, a genocide in Gaza. I suspect there was also the usual factional pressure brought to bear on unions such as the MUA to fall into line. – Ian Curr, 26 July 2026.
Here are some comments from retired unionists
It’s the same political calculation Albanese has made for the past three years. Labor didn’t suffer electorally at the last election, so there was little incentive for the leadership to change course.
For the leadership, it is all about winning elections rather than doing what they believe is morally right. Labor seems determined to avoid a media backlash and criticism from the Zionist lobby, the Coalition, and other opponents if it takes a stronger stand in support of Palestine.
I hope Ed Husic doesn’t pay too high a political price for speaking out. But it is deeply disappointing that others were effectively prevented from even debating the issue.
I believe the majority of Labor members are more sympathetic to Palestine than the party leadership has been prepared to acknowledge.
What happened to the ACTU Secretary, Sally McManus? Her public voice on Palestine has been far less prominent than many union members expected. Sally, the invisible on so many fronts.
More broadly, I think many union hierarchies have shifted to the right and have become increasingly comfortable with institutional politics. This is happening while unions face a prolonged decline in membership and workplace influence.
I have very little to do with the MUA these days, but I see its current position as part of a longer rightward shift that has been underway since at least the Patrick dispute in 1998. . My personal opinion is that the majority of the leadership and their obedient well paid delegates should be strung up on multiple gibbets as working class traitors .
On political issues such as Palestine, much of the organising has come from grassroots activists and organisations like Justice for Palestine Magan-djin rather than from union leadership.
The days of leaders like Big Jim Healy Clarrie O’Shea and Ted Roach—who were prepared to go to jail in defence of union principles—seem a long way off. Today, I believe too many union leaders have become disconnected from the rank and file. Rather than being held accountable to the workers they represent, many appear more focused on preserving their positions within the existing political and industrial system. The only union leaders who go to jail these days are those convicted of crime.
The outcome will mean ongoing reluctance by union officials to name the genocide or support Palestine.
Unions have retreated into economism, willing only to deal with wages and conditions. The only upside of this approach is that sometimes members come together in solidarity, go out on the grass, and even have the occasional win against the boss
26 July 2026
Stand against Genocide
Speak free for a Free Palestine
Rally at Qld Parliament Gates
Wed 16th Sept 4 30
“I am full of old age and pain. In the evening of my life, i am without hope.”
― Frank J. Hardy, Power Without Glory
We include these comments by John Menadue but question a couple of the facts firstly is the Australian Working Class still predominantly white as claimed and secondly is it the trade union movement that exerts influence on the labor party or is it the other way around. Editor, 27 July 2026.
What is the point of power without purpose?
John Menadue
What is the point of power without purpose?
July 22, 2026
The ALP Conference this week will be carefully managed, but Labor’s deeper problem is a hollowed-out party increasingly driven by factions, polling and caution.
A critical issue for this year’s ALP Conference in Adelaide is the decline in the party’s membership and voter support.
Labor’s membership used to be about 100,000 when I joined the ALP in Adelaide 70 years ago. Wayne Swan tells me that membership is now about 50,000. I thought it was much less. In any event no “official” figure is published. It is a dismal record of membership decline considering that our population has trebled in those 70 years.
To contain the loss of broad membership support, Labor has increasingly committed itself to focus groups and marginal seat strategies. Values and vision have given way to marketing. Money has replaced membership as the driving force of campaigns.
The trade unions remain the most important institutional Labor supporters. They have a proud record, but their influence is out of proportion to their role in the community and the Labor constituency.
The ALP no longer represents the people who vote for it. It is controlled by an unrepresentative coterie of factional heavies and officials. Party members have little influence. Factions control Labor pre-selections. “Captain’s picks” are common. Networks of political professionals, union officials and staffers, rather than membership, are supreme. Internal politics is conducted almost entirely within an elite class.
This has produced a managerial, cautious, poll-driven approach to politics, and timidity. Raising money and the compromises that go with it, including on gambling, have supplanted listening to the party membership. By refusing to take the community seriously, and by hiding from public discussion, Labor has disenfranchised its natural constituencies.
Labor’s primary vote has declined from about 45 per cent 60 years ago to less than 30 per cent today. The party has lost its clear identification with the working class. And the working class has changed. It is now more white than blue collar. It is young, female and migrant.
The division of wealth between rich and poor is greater now than ever. Over two million Australians live in poverty. While income inequality has plateaued, wealth inequality in Australia is at historic highs. Driven by inheritance and surging property and asset values, the net worth of Australia’s wealthiest households is racing away from the rest of the country.
That needs a Labor response in the form of serious tax reform. We have a start in the last budget, but taxation of wealth and on our resources needs urgent attention. If we are to have better services in education, health and disabilities, we must raise more tax.
Various means will be adopted at the Adelaide Conference to manage “debates”:
Party members who seriously break with their faction in Conference as in Caucus will be denied advancement. Obsequiousness pays.
Deals will be made in back rooms, before issues come to Conference.
Members will be allowed to let off some steam but will be ignored on key issues such as AUKUS, the US military colonisation of northern Australia and the genocide in Gaza.
The elephant in the room will be the Labor National Policy Forum, composed of a group of MPs, unionists and some rank-and-file members. The role of the Forum is to determine the draft platform. There may be a few marginal changes to this draft at the Conference to give the appearance of openness, but the draft will be endorsed by the Conference.
In such a hollowed-out organisation, it is not surprising that ALP supporters are looking elsewhere, even to One Nation, a subsidiary of Hancock Resources and Gina Rinehart. The National Party is also joining the One Nation siren song with the party Senate leader declaring that conservatives are in a war against mass migration, left-wing globalists and woke institutions.
The ALP is the only credible party able to combat this garbage and offer stable and effective government. But that is not enough. It must reflect the values that Labor has traditionally supported.
Few former Labor Prime Ministers would have been complicit in the Gaza genocide, the forfeiture of our sovereignty in US bases and AUKUS.
Gareth Evans has described the AUKUS pact, as “one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions in Australia’s history…it makes the nation a military target, and serves as a supplementary American fleet”.
The US is not preparing to go to war against China. It is preparing Australia to go to war against China. And the ALP is abetting it.
Fearful of the Zionist lobby the cry for help by Palestinians being murdered in Gaza is ignored.
On the domestic front, First Nations issues are being neglected again. Multiculturalism is taken for granted.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is anathema to many people, but it is serving as a useful protest vote against the elitism and timidity of the ALP and the abject failure of Coalition parties.
Wayne Swan described the ALP win in the last election as wide but shallow. The ALP may not have the same electoral luck in future as it had with Morrison and Dutton as opponents.
Social democratic parties around the world – including the ALP – have not seriously addressed the major change in the working class and the polarisation between the have and the have nots. This polarisation is spurred on by legacy media exercising its power on the side of capital and greed. We have seen that in the recent unscrupulous media campaign against the government’s reforms on negative gearing and capital gains. Yet the Albanese government seeks to curry favour with this legacy media instead of breaking up its power.
What is the point of power without purpose!
The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
John Menadue
27 July 2026