Bernard Keane encapsulates Joyce’s strategy:

Alan Joyce’s logic is the elegant reasoning of a terrorist.

If the result of his massive disruption of the Australian transport system is the further shredding of the Qantas brand, which began under Geoff Dixon and which has accelerated rapidly under his Irish successor, and leads to further service cuts as Australians turns their back on the airline, that’s fine.

It will merely expedite his plans to offshore-by-stealth Qantas, wrecking the Australian-based operation while he sets about establishing lower-cost, more competitive foreign-based services.

To this end, a furious reaction against the airline for its act of malice toward Australian travellers is a price well worth paying; indeed, it may be part of the longer-term plan.

Joyce’s actions and motivations are almost a parody of the globalising logic that profits are all, workers, customers and any notion of public service or good nothing. And it’s in that quality of excess, in the gamble for high stakes, that his house of cards has the real potential to come tumbling down.

It shouldn’t escape notice that the Chair of the Qantas Board, Leigh Clifford, hails from Rio Tinto, a company long known for its overt deunionisation strategy. There is undoubtedly an element of union busting in all this, as well as a broader push from the more militant elements of the Australia corpocracy to smash the Fair Work Act. Peter Reith’s high profile interventions have to be seen in this context.

Hence, Qantas’ other play here, through keeping its cards close to its chest and failing to inform the government of the planned lockout (let alone passengers), was to force the government to bring the dispute before Fair Work Australia. Hence, too, Anthony Albanese’ fury.

But, as Bernard Keane also observes, there is real opportunity for the government.

There is no doubt that Qantas’ public relations offensive has failed. Essential Research found last week that 43% of respondents supported renationalisation of the airline, a large number blamed Qantas management rather than workers, and very large majorities opposed offshoring and thought Joyce’s remuneration too high.

The polling is not unambiguous, but there’s a plethora of pointers to how Joyce’s sneak attack has resonated, from a Facebook protest page which garnered almost 4000 likes in less than 24 hours, to the reaction on Twitter. The timing, coming on top of his huge pay rise on Friday, and the massive disruption and frustration caused to passengers on a Saturday afternoon, is so stupid as to beggar belief.

Joyce has exemplified the mindset of the 1% at a time when the Occupy X movement has successfully put systemic critique back on the agenda.

So, how does all this have the potential to backfire on Joyce?

First, it’s being discussed by many as the most spectacular example of management aggression since Patrick’s locked out its workers on the docks in 1998. Unlike the waterfront dispute, the impact on the public is much more palpable and much more direct.

Secondly, as Ben Schneiders correctly observes in the Sydney Morning Herald today, there is the potential for Fair Work Australia to arbitrate the dispute, a power now rarely used, and only available to the tribunal in the case of significant disruption to the national economy. The Minister, Chris Evans, could also make orders to both sides to cease industrial action, though that would be a last resort. The Fair Work Act emphasises bargaining in good faith, and it may well be that the tribunal will find that Qantas has not been. Then, there are legal questions over whether extending the lockout to employees who were not engaging in industrial action, and standing down others, is lawful.

Given that Qantas is seeking to put FWA on trial, and that the legislation is so closely identified with Julia Gillard, the arguments put by the Commonwealth will repay close watching. It would also be surprising if there were not pressure to tighten the provisions whereby management (unlike unions) does not have to give genuine notice of its intent to pursue industrial action. Qantas’ actions in grounding its fleet immediately, and alleging that the lockout would not begin on Monday, are specious in the extreme.

It’s crucial to remember that Joyce, far from pulling his fleet from the sky as a “response to union action”, has himself, according to the legal definition, taken industrial action.

More broadly, as Schneiders comments, there may be momentum for a broader use of the arbitration power, to protect the public interest.

Thirdly, Qantas faces some pointed questioning over its obligations under the Qantas Act which enabled privatisation. There are specific provisions, reflected in the airline’s own constitution, which require it to maintain its operations in Australia, and restrict it from flying internationally under another name. The unions have corresponded with Qantas about this, and the management line has been that subsidiaries are not bound. But Senate hearings have been examining legislation introduced by Nick Xenophon and Greens Leader Bob Brown which would close off this option. If such amendments were to be supported by the government, we would be in a very interesting place indeed.

And finally, as Bernard Keane writes:

Voters, it seems, just want their old Qantas back. In the view of Joyce and the Qantas board, they can’t get it back in the airline’s current form, not given continuing strong competition from government-subsidised foreign airlines and the high dollar. The only way to get the old Qantas back may indeed be to nationalise it and subsidise it, or to return to the days when competition from foreign airlines was even more tightly restricted than it is now.

And no one in federal politics is pushing those options. Well, not yet.

In a climate when the recklessness and contempt of corporate power reveals its naked face, the government would have little to lose, and much to gain, from reining it in. We shall see.

Alan Joyce is being crazy brave. So, too, should Julia Gillard be.

NB: To keep comments focused, please leave your response on Helen’s open thread. Comments on this post are closed.

Update: Laura Tingle.

The bill has just been signed, after a tortuous and undemocratic process. I think the degree of mobilisation against this anti-union legislation surprised Republicans. There’s been a fair bit of coverage of what’s been going on at Crooked Timber and Scatterplot, for those who may not have been following.

While it may be a bit of an exaggerated comparison to gesture to the Egyptian revolution, as some have been doing, it is an interesting comparison nevertheless. And there is no doubt this protest movement is a significant one.

At Understanding Society, Daniel Little looks thoughtfully at the reasons in US political culture why the protest movement has drawn a large number of participants in over and above those directly affected by the legislation. He also wonders whether or not sensitivities to disparities in wealth and income might be on the increase soon.

Writing in The Guardian, John Logan considers whether the force of the attack on American unions might, paradoxically, be the precursor of an increase in their strength. It’s an interesting take. Unions in advanced capitalist societies have pursued various strategies of accommodation with capital and the state. In Australia, we had the arbitration system and Labourism. In much of Western and Northern Europe, unions entered corporatist bargains with the state and business to concert action and enhance their political and policy influence. Something similar was tried in the UK in the 1970s, and here with the Accord in the 1980s, but it never really had the necessary cultural roots to endure (and after a while, union acquiescence became less necessary to neo-liberal transformation).

In the US, an initially very militant industrial union movement (trade unions, in the narrower sense of the word, have often been more conservative) attained a degree of legislative recognition with the Wagner Act in 1935. Post-war, there was a considerable backlash embodied in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1948, and the CIO was absorbed by the AFL, and unions subjected to McCarthyite purges. This was the era in which Ronald Reagan, then a Democrat, could be a union president.

The heyday of private sector unionism in the US was a form of “business unionism” – entrenching union recognition in large manufacturing companies in exchange for labour quiescence, and for job security, pension rights and health care benefits. Many unions were corrupted, and others became quite conservative political formations. So we could have the AFL-CIO in 1972 under George Meany effectively supporting Richard Nixon.

Recent years have seen a rapid decline in unionisation, along with both structural change in employment and a highly anti-union legislative and regulatory climate. At the same time, service and public sector unions have gathered some strength, and rediscovered the movement’s progressivism. It’s no surprise they’re now under attack by Republicans under the guise of austerity politics, accompanied by a stack of (false) rhetoric about the supposedly comparatively comfortable position of public employees.

If we follow John Logan’s argument, there may be some hope in the re-politicisation of labour rights. He implies that the worst mistake US unions made was their own de-politicisation and incorporation into state and corporate power structures. But it would probably also take the sort of attitudinal change in American political culture Little discusses – a willingness to see collective action as key to individual success.

Spurred on, this time, by the release of 1980 Cabinet papers (resources boom #1) and remarks by Howard government Reserve Bank appointee, Donald McGauchie, we’ve had a fresh round of dire warnings of a “wages breakout”.

This, on top of the usual shrill demands for “reform” in workplace relations – it’s a given, apparently, that the Fair Work Australia Act empowers unions.

Oh really? In a very useful post at We’re All Dead, Matt Cowgill does some myth busting on the current state of play in labour market hysteria.

Among other stats, Cowgill shows that the wages share of national income continues to head downwards, and is at its lowest point since 1964.

A reasonable observer might surely think:

(a) There’s a fairly pure case of ideology in the strict sense of the word in all this hoo-hah – “common sense” which is completely contradicted by facts;

(b) Fair Work Australia actually does incorporate a lot of the thrust of WorkChoices.

The thrust of this allegation is that Julia Gillard produced a very business friendly draft of the Fair Work Act, and Greg Combet and Kevin Rudd intervened to make it more favourable to unions.

Gottliebsen, of course, is over the moon that Gillard didn’t want the “former ACTU boss” to have his way. If it’s true, Labor supporters will be less so.

I wonder if there’s going to be a drum beat of this stuff every day. The end result is not just to destabilise the Labor campaign’s progress and allow the opposition to talk up a narrative of “government instability”, but also to instill doubts about Gillard’s beliefs among a raft of different segments of the electorate.

It’s diabolically clever.

I’m starting to wonder if a certain departing Cabinet Minister, who’s refused to repudiate his earlier characterisation of the PM as a “conservative careerist”, has a hand in all this, particularly given Wayne Swan’s comments that the leaks weren’t coming from where people might expect.

I doubt that the campaign, no matter how many million dollars it costs, will really gain any further traction. I’m sure a lot of people are thoroughly sick of the dude with the 4WD who pops up in the Perth CBD by now. And I suspect that the sheer ubiquity of the mining industry’s noise machine might have made many suspect that self interest is at its base, and that they’re essentially playing a game of bluff and bullying. After all, with all the talk of ‘consultation’, how many of us get to discuss with the government how much tax we’d like to pay?

And for anyone seriously looking for mythbusting articles, there are quite a few to choose from. Two I haven’t linked to before are by Stephen Long and Chris Lloyd.

Another misconception, which may not be apparent to Canberra commentators, revolves around claims about Queensland mining seats being vulnerable. It was significant that Jim Turnour, member for the Cairns and FNQ seat of Leichardt, was the Labor MP calling in caucus for discipline and solidarity with Kevin Rudd. Turnour’s electorate is usually one of the seats with a mining workforce pinged as being in danger.

Those who think that any seat with miners employed in it is automatically under threat might like to consider that much of the Queensland mining industry (particularly in coal) is heavily unionised, and to a much greater extent than in WA. There’s also polling showing a majority of mining workers supporting the RSPT, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

Normally seen by many in the Labor Party as too close to sections of the business community, Howes has received significant criticism from sections of that same business community for the advertising campaign and what they now see as the likelihood that he will be a leading figure arguing the case for the government’s tax between now and the next election.

Gosh. Imagine that. A union leader defending a Labor government.

I’m not sure what sort of dark insinuations are contained in this passage – the AWU might encounter trouble dealing with bosses? Howes’ path to parliament might be one strewn with pitfalls? Of course, it’s perfectly ok for the self same “sections of [the] business community” to run their own prominent advertising in the paper Van Onselen works for, presumably because they are not acting out of class interest but in the national interest, which, as he probably believes, is identical to the industry’s interest. That’s certainly what the mining industry would have us believe.

The whole article is premised on a very tenuous distinction between “reform” (good) and “class warfare” (bad). Bill Kelty might be surprised to learn that he’d never uttered dire threats of the consequences of de-unionisation in the mining industry, or that the Accord tradeoff of tax cuts and a social wage for wage restraint had no class dimension. Or, for that matter, that his push to reshape the union movement on industry rather than craft and occupational lines was designed, among other things, to make it a more effective vehicle for a class politics.

But, leaving aside the details of Van Onselen’s grasp of labour and political history, and indeed Kelty’s merits or otherwise as a leader of the labour movement, what I’m interested in is how the trope of “class warfare” can be invoked to delegitimise an argument. Note that it’s not an argument in itself – and it’s an absurdity if it is, as both his reasoning and the basic fact that any distributive action by the state necessarily shifts wealth from one class to another as well as impacting on individuals in the aggregate demonstrate. Maybe Van Onselen believes that progressive taxation is “class warfare”. I don’t know.

The invocation of “class warfare”, and it is that, not an argument, seeks to circumscribe the limits of what is sayable in political debate.

When did it become such a shibboleth, and would any of those who invoke it as if it’s a heresy care to explain why?

Update: Guy Beres.

In the wake of the privatisation imbroglio perpetrated by the Bligh government, expectations were that solidarity between Labor and labour wouldn’t be at the forefront of the Brisbane May Day March. Anna Bligh, and I believe Treasurer Andrew Fraser, disappeared to North America, first purporting to show an interest in bionics, and then holding a ‘virtual Cabinet’ with the provincial government of British Columbia.

What these ventures have to do with anything is anyone’s guess. Commenters on the Brisbane Times‘ story correctly pointed out that Peter Beattie is already paid 250k a year to represent Queensland’s trade interests in North America, and that a ‘virtual’ meeting could surely be virtual for the Canadians, and in Brisbane for the Premier.

To his credit, Deputy Premier Paul Lucas fronted the march, but was met with the jeers which the State Labor crew richly deserve. Kevin Rudd kept his distance, preferring to march with the LHMU, a union well back in the parade, and concentrating on the Resources Super Tax in his address, an initiative I warmly welcome.

In a nutshell, the impasse of Labor politics, and the scissions the Labour movement has fallen prone to, is encapsulated in the events of this day.

It’s a longer story, but I’ve previously argued that (late) modern Labor’s political Janus face results from at least two factors: the corporatised economism of state politics, where slogans about jobs mask a wholesale surrender to business interests; and the weakening of the links between workers, unions and the professional political class.

John Quiggin has provided us with some reflections on Labour Day:

Among his thoughts, he argues:

The old-style politics of class (with the working class represented by male manual workers, gathered in large, naturally solidaristic workplaces) is no longer relevant to the great majority of Australian workers. That doesn’t mean that class has ceased to matter, but it does mean that workers experience class and power relationships more in terms of individual experience than as collective interactions between classes. So, in particular, unions need to be seen more as mutual aid associations that protect their individual members against exploitation and unfair treatment than as vehicles for the mobilisation of the working class. The kinds of legal changes sought to reverse the generally anti-union trend of past decades needs to reflect this orientation.

I think this underplays the degree to which the union movement, particularly as represented by the ACTU, has long practiced a broader class politics transcending trade and occupational union particularism. While I also think that class politics has to move beyond a masculinised workerism, and to take account of the changed social and cultural conditions of twenty first century Australia, I’m not sure things are so simple as John suggests, though he’s surely right that the casualisation of work and a host of other social and economic changes have individualised work relationships.

But I don’t think unions need to return to being essentially mutual benefit societies. They do have a role in building solidarity where there is none, though this role may have to include creating the conditions for more solidaristic workplace relations, through rethinking how unions can intervene in shaping the labour market itself.

I think there’s a great need to develop an approach which does respond to the fracturing of class, the refashioning of the workplace, and the naturalisation of expectations around insecure work. It’s something I’d like to do more work on, and will be writing further about, but it’s also something I think is well worth a preliminary discussion on a very fractured Brisbane Labour Day.

NB: My previous May Day post is here.

Rudd’s climate change reversal was the embodiment of a cynicism of truly monumental proportions; the culmination of a sustained failure to hold a policy conversation with the public, and born of fear of an Abbott fear campaign.

So as May Day dawns, it’s worth posing the question: what has happened to Australian Labor?

I can’t remember who first described Kevin Rudd as ‘Australia’s inaugural Federal premier’, but there’s real truth in that phrase. The risk averse nature of state politics, the obsession with controlling the media cycle, the concentration on bite sized focus grouped ‘announceables’, and the failure to lead public opinion; it’s all there with Rudd.

It’s the triumph of the political pragmatists – a vacuous politics driven by the minutiae of electoral calculus which Paul Keating warned against in the midst of the 2007 Rudd ascendancy. Sure, it might make sense to ‘clear the decks’ and pitch solely to the outer suburban and regional voters Abbott is also appealling to with his unprincipled populism. ‘Keep the conversation on health’, one can imagine Ruddistas intoning with the frequency of a constantly repeated soundbite.

But something more profound is at work here; a failure of political imagination and courage.

Much has been made over the past few days of Kevin Rudd’s lack of a reform agenda. I’m often suspicious of that word. Too often, it means a narrow economism, focused solely on enabling business to compete in a globalised world. Few point to the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984 by the Hawke Government as a great reform, preferring to laud the deregulation of markets and the floating of the dollar. Yet the former represented a real shift in the possibilities of equality in this nation, and a reconfiguration of social relations for the better. The Rudd government’s record is equally barren on both scores, and a chance has been missed to lead on an issue the PM himself quite correctly identified as the great challenge of our times.

It may be that Paul Norton is right and that the Labor party, reflecting the class and workplace cleavages of another century, finds it difficult to factor sustainability into its political equation. Indeed, that failure, whose consequences are now writ large, opens the political space for The Greens, as opposed to the soft environmentalism and middle class civil liberties agenda of the now departed Democrats. But the intransigence of some Ministers, unions and a recrudescent party culture is no excuse for a Prime Minister whose power within the government has constantly been celebrated.

What’s left for Labor? There are still reasons to re-elect the Rudd Government, and reasons which transcend the horror of the Abbott alternative. There’s something in having Ministers with the right instincts, and with a desire to put right the wreckage John Howard inflicted on all of us. The irony is that some of those Ministers who are most attuned to the demands of the second decade of the new century are now at risk from Rudd’s obsession with a risk-free politics. Labor should have another term, but some time in that term, and the sooner the better, Kevin Rudd should go.

Update: My thoughts on Brisbane Labour Day 2010, and John Quiggin‘s reflections on May Day.

Ever since Bill Clinton discovered this tactic in Arkansas, the reflex move for New Labour, Labor, Democrat, [insert name of local centre-left party here] pollies is to do the wedge between parents and teachers thing. I’m not sure that it’s ever been done before in the guise of having parents act as strikebreakers, but this is apparently what Julia Gillard is contemplating, as the AEU asks its members to boycott the administration of national tests.

The teachers’ concern revolves around the misleading data on the MySchool website, and the misleading uses it could be put to.

Julia Gillard’s concern is votes.

Incidentally: The Law Institute of Victoria points out that parents administering tests could be at legal risk.

I

The Bligh government’s decision to privatise a range of public assets, most significantly Queensland Rail, certainly requires explanation. It’s politically irrational, and as John Quiggin argues, the economic case for privatisation has no merit. Most observers of the 2009 Queensland election campaign concur that Labor’s victory was secured only in a few short days before polling day itself; in part because electors started to focus on the real prospect of a Lawrence Springborg led LNP government, but importantly also because Labor ran a more activist campaign than could have been anticipated – highlighting the need to preserve public sector jobs, and standing up to credit ratings agency in favour of an economic growth agenda to protect Queensland jobs and workers’ standards of living. Debt and deficit scares were pushed aside in the midst of the GFC.

Yet, a few short months later, with no advance warning or consultation, Anna Bligh and Treasurer Andrew Fraser dropped the privatisation bombshell. The polls essentially haven’t moved since, and the public trust that Anna Bligh herself had created collapsed almost instantaneously. Though the LNP opposition led by John-Paul Langbroek is hardly a convincing alternative government, they’ve looked ever since like they have a very smooth path to victory at the next election.

So, the political rationality of this push stands in question, and particularly so given that obvious compromises to reverse part of the privatisation have not been made. Though you can hardly walk up George Street without hearing rumours of coups against Bligh, it appears clear that it is now very unlikely that there will be any backdown, despite a very prominent and active community and union campaign (led by the ETU, in particular).

Labor faces a large defection of support – notably in the suburbs and regions – to the LNP, and a probably slightly smaller swing in inner city seats direct to The Greens. The optional preferential voting system, and the habit inculcated by years of ‘Just Vote One’ campaigning by Peter Beattie in the face of conservative disunity, make it likely that many electors will vote for The Greens, then walk out of the polling booth in disgust, without giving Labor a preference. The ALP’s rational political strategy would be to reverse at least the privatisation of QR, and make a turn to the left, but this almost certainly won’t happen. Rather all the government can offer – including to its own backbenchers – is a strategy of toughing out public criticism and hoping it will all be forgotten before we next go to the polls.

II

A number of possible explanations can be advanced for the privatisation craze. One would be in terms of the factional and political dynamics within the Labor party and caucus, the elimination of any real independent powerbases in Cabinet, the group around Bligh, and the relations between the ALP, the Labour Movement, and the community. Another would be the influence of local business, economists, bureaucrats in Treasury and the Premier’s Department, and the inter-relationship of a resources economy and global flows of investment, exports and capital.

As others will be focusing on these aspects of the privatisation push, I’ve chosen to look at the decision more in the light of longer term structural factors – particularly the influence of the twin forces of globalisation and the centralisation of state power in Australia, and the exhaustion of both Queensland Labor political culture and the New Labor style of state governance and politics. For me, the most important question, which I think could only be answered by Bligh and her crew in sound bite speak, would be what exactly the purpose of the Queensland Labor party is.

III

It’s not as widely known as it should be that, far from being the red neck state of Joh era mythos, Queensland has a very radical past. The work of writers such as Carole Ferrier and historians such as Ray Evans, and in particular their co-edited book Radical Brisbane and Evans’ History of Queensland, documents a continuing tradition of radicalism. Queensland saw the first Labor government in the world, Brisbane experienced a General Strike in 1912, T. J. Ryan was the only leader in the British Empire to oppose Conscription in 1916 and 1917. This state was the first in Australia to have free public hospitals, women’s activism dates back to the 1870s, and even the dispute which brought down the Gair government in the Split of 1957 was over a substantive issue of the extension of workers’ rights.

Space prevents me from developing this argument in full, but my contention would be that the Queensland Labor tradition was a far more properly democratic socialist one than the experience of NSW Labor, for instance, an obvious comparator.

IV

So, where does the State Labor government stand today?

It’s simplifying things a bit, of course, but it seems to me that Labor does three things in government:

(a) Acts as cheerleader for and enabler of fractions of local and global capital; from the ever present developers to international coal. Little attempt is made to question the virtue of development in general, or specific developments in particular – including those which will do much harm to the government’s purported climate change abatement strategy. Anna Bligh appears captive and supine in the face of business interests, caught up in a spiral of zero sum competition with other Premiers, reliant on a drip feed of donations and jobs from resources industries and others to implement her ostensible economic aims;

(b) Plays to the worst in the communitarian New Labor text book; using “nudge” ideas to govern the soul, to shape our behaviour in the face of risks perceived or beaten up by the Sunday Mail or talkback radio. There’s a puritan element to Labor administration, which runs directly counter to a Left tradition I’d like to see revived; that of enhancing and facilitating the ability of citizens to develop autonomous capacities for self government and for using leisure time for self development and other directed activity in the family, friendship networks and local and wider communities.

Struggles over working time – to free the capacities of citizens through both greater leisure and a high standard of employment rights – have been displaced by a narrow economism which celebrates jobs and growth for their own sake.

(c) Ducks for cover when anything goes wrong in the services the state still has responsibility for delivering to its citizens. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen Ministers on the ABC tv news throw up their hands and say “but the Department didn’t tell me!”.

IV

Much of this futile activity, shaped by a now well established set of political tactics (“Labor has a plan!”, “Jobs, jobs, jobs!”, etc), takes place in a context where state governments have little power to stucture really distinctive outcomes outside service delivery. Even ten years ago, let alone fifty or a hundred, their influence was much greater. For example, the pay equity reforms, on which I worked as a consultant in 2000, held out the possibility of a real reconfiguration not just of conditions but also of social relations in a gendered workforce. And the Beattie government, perhaps suffused in something of a nostalgic glow now that we know what came next, pioneered an industry policy agenda based around human capital and endogenous growth theory, emblazoned as ‘The Smart State’. Much of this strategy, though continuing to influence the thinking of Rudd Labor, and Wayne Swan in particular, was dismantled by the Bligh regime.

Peter Beattie also understood, in resisting the push from powerful quarters for the privatisation of QR, that jobs were worth more to individuals, families and communities than a matter of mere calculation. There’s no question that he was right to be sceptical of PPPs, and to reject privatisation and the attack on working conditions and jobs which will follow in its wake. He had some awareness of both the dignity of labour, and the way in which public economic power could be leveraged for social purposes.

The Queensland government now stands empty of promise, displaying an inability to unify its areas of residual responsibility with any theme other than anodyne slogans, often ones imported – via the temporary return of Mike Kaiser – from a strategy which supposedly reinvigorated NSW Labor. We all know how that turned out.

And in its own domain, decades of managerialism have ensconced a drive for constant re-organisation in the public sector, a make work culture of reports on reports and the cult of the Excel spreadsheet, where productive activity is secondary to the reduction of all of us to worker bees in the public part of the capitalist hive, dreaming only of a credit card driven escape. Corporatisation and managerialism pave the road to privatisation, and the attendant adoption of a narrow balance sheet mentality (seen also by the fixation on numbers – numbers of jobs, billions of export dollars) which is what passes for thinking among some Ministers.

Purpose is lost.

V

Much could also be said, and will be said by others today, of the significance of global flows of investment, capital and exports. I’d prefer to emphasise, though, the sociological force of homogenisation as a globalising factor. Queensland becomes more like everywhere else, content, or apparently content to feed on the scraps of the resources buck; an increasingly deracinated and featureless landscape.

This homogenisation, which is also a social force, has huge implications for the evisceration of tradition and any vision of an alternative future; any ability to conceive of something different which blends the best of the old and the new. Another world is possible, but not here.

VI

So, too, we see homogenisation in politics. One State Labor government is much like another. Queensland’s distinctive culture is lost, and no real vision advanced of a future for its citizens which would be both transformational and liberatory. The irony of the late arrival of the privatisation push in the Sunshine State is that it’s a reflex of the dying New Labor beast – as if the government were saying, we’ve done everything else except privatise. Decades on from Thatcher and the first throes of neo-liberalism, it’s a perverse form of modernisation, in a register heavily ironic. To privatise is what New Labor governments do, so let’s do it!

Here, if we had more time, we could focus more on the precise trajectory by which the links with past left tradition, with the labour movement and with public culture have become attenuated; the particular pattern where a governing impetus becomes deformed into the routine action of a political class, with all its connections into finance capital, and resources capital.

But, the central contention for me is that Queensland Labor has forgotten what it’s for. I doubt, I’d reiterate, that anyone in Cabinet really knows, beyond their own dreams of endless power. It’s this evisceration of purpose, driven by the diminution of responsibility and the globalisation of the same, which really explains the privatisation push. Ideology, stripped of ideas and a social purpose, reveals itself as irrationality, venality and stupidity.

VII

So, what is to be done?

For me, one of the greatest irony in a litany thereof, was Anna Bligh’s supposedly knock down argument, delivered as part of her half-hearted defence of the privatisations, that it may have been appropriate for Labor to run State Hotels and Butcher’s Shops in the 1920s, but not in 2010. I’m not defending State Hotels per se, though perhaps they might stay open longer than Bligh’s wowserish desire to ensure that we can’t enjoy a drink because we can’t be trusted to do so implies. But there’s a significance in the trashing of the Queensland Labor tradition by its current leader which goes to a total failure of purpose and imagination, and a failure to see that public purposes have a role to play in socialising the benefits of economic life.

What we need now, I’d contend, is to start to reimagine what our forebears saw as the purpose of state government; to extend to the citizens the fruits of their labours, and to develop capacities for personal, civic and communal action beyond the narrow repetition of the same which is work in late capitalism. We need to start thinking of what public services are for, what democratic management of enterprise means, and what we can do, collectively, to both articulate and realise a dream of a more socially just and sustainable State.

In the wake of the GFC, and the exhaustion of neo-liberalism whose parallel is to be seen in the exhaustion of Labor’s purpose, I feel hopeful that we can actually begin to articulate such an agenda, and begin to dream big dreams again.

Elsewhere: John Quiggin’s talk at the same event.

Previous discussion on LP here.