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By Andrew Murray SM
We are facing a federal election some time this year on a date of the Prime Minister’s choosing. It will more than likely be after the Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting in October, because Mr Howard wants to see the Queen – and she will not come to CHOGM if an election has been called.
Electioneering has begun in spasmodic fashion, and an election budget
has been brought down. The Labor Party, however, is proving slow to articulate policies that are likely to inspire voters. There are a number of plausible reasons for this.
Since the date of the election is
in the Prime Minister’s hands, Labor is unlikely to want to spill the beans too soon, thus leaving nothing to propose closer to the election. On matters of economic management the differences between the parties
have got so small that any decent proposals Labor makes are likely to be taken up by the Government. Since Hewson’s defeat, it has been thought that an opposition ought simply to wear a government down rather than
take the risky path of proposing alternatives.
There is a way around this for the Labor Party and that is to go back to its roots, when, as a party representing workers, it fought for justice for those who
needed it most. Who needs it most may have changed, but there is plenty to be done, and anything that contributes to justice improves the general moral quality of the community.
Such a move would put a
distance between Labor and the conservative parties that could not be taken up by adjustments to policy. Conservatism in the modern political sense holds that the status quo and the existing establishment is better
or safer than any likely alternative and is sceptical towards proposals for social change. By recovering its interest in social justice, the Labor Party could readily re-establish its own ground.
On Social
Justice Sunday in September last year, I identified three areas of Australian life where justice is lacking: growing inequality in the distribution of wealth and opportunity in our community; on-going issues
surrounding Aboriginal reconciliation, the effects of treatment Aboriginal peoples have received and our attempts to rectify this; our response to the needs of asylum seekers in Australia, that is, of people who
have fled their own homelands because of intolerable conditions and who, having found their way here, are asking to stay. More complex is the amalgam of international issues ranging from the effects of globalisation
to the means of assuring human rights.
Labor lost its way when its traditional constituents became wealthy. It has, perhaps, also been slow to recover from the shock of the sacking of Gough Whitlam and his
failed attempt at rapid and radical change. If it is to act, now is the time to do so, because justice is not won quickly, and minds are won only slowly.
Fr Murray teaches philosophy at the Catholic
Institute of Sydney.
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