Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has disappointed many who voted for it and betrayed others like the CFMEU. James Supple looks at why Labor has sunk so low
Anthony Albanese’s government came to power with no ambition for substantial change or any intention of rocking the establishment’s boat. But recent months have seen it move even further to the right, unwilling to challenge the rich and powerful or map out any serious agenda.
The most shocking example is its union busting attack on the CFMEU. The union has faced years of government-orchestrated attacks, usually launched by the Liberals, in response to construction bosses’ demands.
Now Labor has joined the bosses to attack the union militancy that has delivered wage rises and safety on sites for workers.
A Labor government is imposing the biggest attack the union has faced in decades, justified by unproven corruption allegations in the media.
In the process the Labor Party is undermining its own support and facing a serious backlash.
It is denying itself millions in election funding, with the CFMEU banned from donating money while under administration.
The union was its single largest donor before the last election, contributing $3 million. The ETU has also pledged to withhold $1 million.
And it has alienated hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers, including union members who have been among its strongest supporters.
It’s sickening to see Albanese stoop so low. But there is a long history of Labor backing business and the rich against its own union and working class supporters—even at the cost of electoral self-destruction.
This is built into the makeup of Labor as a reformist party that is committed to using parliament to manage the system.
Albanese took the reins as Labor leader following the party’s shock defeat in the 2019 election. He immediately dumped the modest efforts to tax the rich the party had proposed.
Blaming Labor’s targeting of wealthy housing investors and shareholders for the defeat, Albanese set out to move the party to the right. He adopted a “small target” strategy that promised little, relying on anger at Scott Morrison to carry Labor to power.
Albanese made it into office—but only just. Labor’s primary vote actually fell to its lowest since 1934.
His government has faced problems requiring dramatic solutions—from a housing crisis that has pushed prices out of reach for large sections of the working class, to a cost of living crisis, services in childcare, aged care and education that are under huge strain, and the growing climate emergency.
Yet Albanese has not been willing to take the action required to fix any of these problems.
This would require taking on wealthy and powerful corporate interests, and a willingness to increase taxes on the rich, target property investors, and challenge mining company profits and media bosses.
Instead he has sought to establish Labor as the reliable servant of business and the ruling class, in an effort to become the dominant centrist party in Australian politics and leave Peter Dutton and the Liberals marginalised.
Labor’s hope was that Dutton’s hard right politics and loss of the teal electorates would consign the Liberals to irrelevancy.
Instead Labor’s inaction in the face of the cost of living crisis, and its lack of any serious agenda to tackle the environmental crisis and climate change, has produced widespread anger and disillusionment.
Labor has enthusiastically boosted Australian militarism and embraced the AUKUS deal with UK and US imperialism. It is also expanding US bases in northern Australia, turning it into a key launchpad for war on China. And, it has also tried to outdo Dutton on his racism against migrants and refugees.
This has seen Albanese drag Labor to the right, backing Israel as it unleashes genocide on Gaza and running its own racist scare campaign against refugees released from detention following a series of High Court decisions.
As Albanese’s support has dropped he has become even more spineless and conservative, in fear at Dutton’s response to any new announcement.
Albanese’s decision to drop questions from the census on sexuality and gender identity showed how hopeless he has become. The government said it wanted to avoid a “divisive” debate, obviously fearing another attack from Dutton over “woke” politics, before the outcry from the LGBTIQ community and others forced it to back down.
Serving big business
Albanese has worked hard to show big business that he can be relied on.
His 2023 diary, released under FoI laws to former Senator Rex Patrick, showed “a downright throng of CEOs and other big-end-of-town heavyweights getting through the door”, Sydney Morning Herald journalists wrote, with Albanese meeting everyone from mining CEOs and Business Council reps to investment bankers. This compared to a “mere handful of meetings” with union leaders.
Labor’s attack on the CFMEU is one result of its desire to serve the bosses.
Albanese did not want to be seen as siding with a militant union in the face of the clamour from the mainstream media and the construction bosses for action.
Another example of his backing for the rich and powerful is the $368 billion Labor is spending on nuclear subs while refusing to spend more to relieve the cost of living, increase JobSeeker or maintain the NDIS.
Despite its talk of action on climate change, Labor has strongly backed the mining industry and its expansion of coal and gas projects.
Resources Minister Madeleine King recently declared that, “No government in recent memory has put the resources industry at the centre of its policy-making in the way that the Albanese government has.”
At first glance, Labor’s enthusiasm for the rich and powerful might seem puzzling.
After all, Labor was founded with the aim of representing the working class in parliament, and using control of government and the state in workers’ interests.
Labor in government is concerned to be seen to deliver something to the union leaders, who continue to dominate the Labor Party. But that is subordinated to running the system.
So Albanese supported an increase in the minimum wage and has introduced modest industrial relations changes around multi-employer bargaining and casual work.
The business lobby resents this. But it has not led to any increase in industrial action, with just one multi-employer deal finalised to date and most of those being discussed either funded by government or negotiated with employer support. Strike days have actually fallen since Labor took office.
Labor governments have always been committed to working within capitalism and accepting the system’s rules.
From the beginning, the party was controlled not by rank-and-file workers but by the trade union leaders, a social layer committed to working within capitalism to negotiate with bosses over wages and conditions, rather than challenging the system itself.
Once in government, Labor MPs had responsibility for maintaining Australian capitalism, and ensuring that the company profits that drive it, remained healthy. Otherwise they risked employers withholding investment and sacking thousands of workers.
With the bulk of companies and jobs controlled by the private sector, any government that supports capitalism, especially a Labor government that is not the preferred option of the rich and powerful, has to keep big business onside.
When the economy is expanding it has sometimes delivered real reforms, from the introduction of the aged pension and Medicare to the expansion of public services. But regardless of whether the economy is in boom or slump, Labor has always worked to ensure corporate profits.
This result is that every Labor government has ended up attacking its own working class supporters—the people who put it into parliament in the first place. Albanese’s attack on the CFMEU is just the latest example.
Betrayals
Prime Minister Ben Chifley is lauded as a Labor hero. But he determinedly opposed the 40 hour week and sent in troops to break a coal miners’ strike in 1949.
In times of recession, when economic crisis threatens bosses’ profits, Labor governments have launched even more savage attacks.
James Scullin, elected as the Great Depression hit, abandoned any attempt to protect workers from the crisis and pledged to repay the country’s debts to the banks. This meant driving through massive cuts to government spending that slashed pensions, unemployment payments and public sector wages.
Gough Whitlam’s government is seen as Labor’s golden age of radical reform. But when recession hit, his government also handed down a horror budget in 1975 that cut back social programs and spending.
When Labor came back to power in 1983 under Bob Hawke, it was fully committed to a program of wage cutting through the Accords with the union movement. This drastically weakened trade unions and saw a dramatic shift in the share of GDP going to corporate profits.
Often, in the process, Labor has destroyed its own electoral support.
Scullin’s Labor government was elected in a landslide in 1929, but suffered an electoral calamity after one term in office, losing government and more than half its seats.
The Hawke and Keating governments came to be loathed for the wage cuts, deregulation and privatisation they forced through.
By 1996, when Keating lost to Howard, rage with Labor’s neoliberal agenda was white hot, with one Labor MP commenting that the mention of words like “productivity” and “efficiency” around workers, was, “a good way to end your life”.
The result is that fewer and fewer workers trust Labor, with its primary vote shrinking over time. Before 1990 it had only dropped below 40 per cent of the vote twice in half a century. Now it rarely gets close, falling to 32.6 per cent at the last election.
Many now look to independents or The Greens as alternative electoral options. But these replicate the same basic strategy that has dragged Labor to the right—relying on more seats and influence in parliament to deliver change.
What’s needed is a party that looks to struggle outside parliament as the key to change, through building mass movements on the streets and encouraging trade union and workers’ strike action in the workplaces.
This is the way to fight for real wages rises to tackle the cost of living, taxing the rich to fund services, and an end to support for Israel and US imperialism.
We need to build a socialist party that is not afraid to challenge capitalism and the power of the rich.
