17 June 2011 Volume: 21 Issue: 11 Australia's ... - Eureka Street

Volume 21 Issue: 1117 June 2011Liberals and the radical Greens have been left stranded.They are looking for authentic, principled leadership that delivers. They are looking forleaders who would rather lose big on matters of principle than win by a margin oncompromised policy. Labor ought to be the natural home for such leaders. Its own history hasshown as much.Indeed, if there’s anything I’ve picked up from the decade that I’ve been living in Australia,it is that Labor best functions on principle. Whitlam. Hawke. Keating. They crashed andburned in their own way — but progressives have to in order to overcome self-interestedinertia. Their vision intersected with their mettle. Rudd shared their qualities to some degree,including a tendency to be unlikeable.Today, as Faulkner points out, party machinery is sidelining the activism that used to beLabor’s lifeblood. In its preoccupation with electability, it is failing to engage with acommunity that is more concerned with what it stands for than whether it can win. ‘Peoplewere attracted to the Labor Party because they wanted to make the world a better place,’ saysFaulkner. Such people still exist.I hope that his statement is not taken as memorialising the past, but as signalling the wayforward. With the next federal election still a couple years away, there are many opportunitiesto appeal to sections of the community who are looking for a good reason to vote Labor. I amone of these.©2011 EurekaStreet.com.au 13