TWO YEARS ago, ALP International Projects was created to build dialogue with political parties around the world and to encourage the spread of robust democracies in Asia and the Pacific. We decided that our programs would be built on three simple principles: practicality, engagement and partnership.

Before any program is delivered, the International Party Development Committee (IPDC) decides whether there will be tangible benefits for us and the participants in terms of skills transfer and furthering global dialogue on key issues. We have to be engaged to have a voice.

And to be effective, we need local partners. This means building partnerships with regional political parties and other organisations in Asia and the Pacific to ensure that we can operate effectively on the ground and understand local issues.

Under this strategy, we have run major programs in Indonesia, Philippines, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Our counterpart parties from each of these countries have also been involved in our Australia-based training programs.

Recent programs have also included participants from Tonga, Mongolia, Pakistan and Malaysia. Interest in our activities is growing and we will continue to build on our achievements in the year ahead. Every program has follow-up activities, and monitoring and evaluation built in to ensure we stay on top of the political governance challenges in the region and can plan programs to address them.

We have also continued to strengthen links with global progressive organisations and parties. Given the global challenges we face, we will need to be able to engage in global dialogues at a range of levels across the party.

Labor’s ongoing ability to deliver cutting edge capacity building and technical assistance to political parties in our region is based on our building of partnerships with political parties around the world. Engagement is core business.

Read about our raft of programs in the latest Quarterly Bulletin.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute Address. Read an extract from Stephen Smith’s speech to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Australia’s Back in the Game. Duncan Kerr reports that Australia is back in the game of comprehensive international engagement.

Towards a New Pacific Engagement Democracy Promotion Asia and the Pacific. Bob McMullan comments on the new Pacific Engagement through Australia’s Pacific aid program.

Nepal Elections Mark Butler reports on the Australian Election Observation Group’s mission to Nepal’s Constituent Assembly Elections.

Course for Political Advisors Geoff Gallop reports on our inaugural Political Advisers’ Course for Asia and the Pacific, convened at the Graduate School of Government (GSG) at the University of Sydney in February 2008

Democracy Promotion in Asia and the Pacific. Read an excerpt from Michael Morgan’s speech to the Australian Institute for International Affairs and Centre for Democratic Institutions Public Forum

Update on Elections in the Region. Read updates on regional elections.

You can read all about these important changes and the raft of initiatives we have undertaken over the last two years by subscribing to our Quarterly Bulletin online at http://www.ip.alp.org.au.

Posted 18 March 2008.





YOU GET LIFE for murder, and you vow to spend your lifetime together when you marry. A lifetime in the ALP falls somewhere between the two.

Life membership is mostly associated with service to a sporting club or group or an organisation of like-minded persons. You get it for years of membership or service, or being noteworthy in the work you have performed.

Again, life membership of the ALP falls somewhere between the two. In most state branches, life membership is conferred for 40 years' continuous membership. Gough Whitlam was given life membership of the NSW Branch in the 1980s, but was also feted at the 2007 National Conference with ‘national’ life membership. I’m sure he had something to say about the constitutionality of it, but was happy to go along with the ballyhoo in the lead up to Kevin 07.

However, for an ordinary member and especially one of my age, life membership by virtue of 40 years continuous membership has been extraordinarily difficult to achieve. I’ve been a member of at least eight branches in three states and territories since I joined in 1968.

In the early days, membership had to be renewed over a two or three month period in person at a branch meeting, with you keeping the original and a copy going to state office as well as one being retained by the branches. Nowadays with head office ticket issues, faxes and phones, membership renewals are far easier.

Loss or non retention of a ticket was all too easy by an individual - especially one without political ambitions. However, the loss of branch records happened sometimes too. I was present at a meeting of the Balmain Branch of the ALP in the late 1960s when the lights went out and, in the resulting confusion, the membership book and records went missing!

Even rarer was the loss of head office records, but this too has happened - even in Victoria. The great fire of 1985 in head office ranks along with the ‘Yes Minister’ floods of 1968 for loss of records. In the former case, this has meant that many long-serving members have been unable to receive their life memberships as they cannot prove when they joined.

The big question remains: why would anyone want to retain not just ALP membership, but continuity for 40 years? Even some good and faithful party servants, including MPs and former Ministers, missed a year here and there - often due to overseas or interstate work which took them away from their local patch at renewal time.

And the schisms, splits and rollercoaster fortunes of the party at national and state levels would have led to membership falling by the wayside in some years, or taken away as a result of suspension or even expulsion, as occurred in Victoria in the '50s, '60s and '70s.

As a babyboomer member about to receive life membership, I have asked myself the same question many times over that 40 years.

Posted 18 March 2008

Vale Clyde Cameron

By John Bannon, SA Premier 1982-1992

Posted 17 March 2008

CLYDE CAMERON would have been very gratified by the media attention given to his death.

He would have been unconcerned about the revival of memories of past feuds and his presentation as a ‘hard man and hater’, or even as a ‘bitter and vindictive politician’. He had outlived nearly all of his enemies, made unlikely rapprochement with some like Bob Santamaria, and had ensured his account of all the disputes was comprehensively on the historical record.

This involved not just his own documents but included monumental oral history recordings he made with most of the leading players on both sides of politics. Much of this lies under embargo in the National Library for the delectation of future historians. Clyde was a man who took to heart the maxim that history is made by those who write it.

Much has been made of his extraordinarily productive association with Gough Whitlam in the period when revision of party policy and organisational reform were necessary for Labor to hope to win federal office. This was followed by the terrible falling out in 1975 amid the disintegration of the Whitlam government.

Here it was not so much the ‘sacking’ of Clyde from his specialist portfolio, but the manner in which it was done. Whitlam would not face Clyde or take him into his confidence on the reconstruction of his ministry, letting rumour and innuendo run. Finally he was forced to confront him, inappropriately offering him Science, the only ministerial post left. Clyde’s humiliating treatment was never forgiven and the two sparred constantly thereafter.

Cameron was not always the aggressor. Successive editions of the Parliamentary Handbook issued during the time of the Whitlam Government record the strange (and mistaken) fact that Clyde was born on 11 February 1914, just a month after that of his younger brother Senator Don Cameron. When Barry Cohen drew this to Gough Whitlam’s attention he responded ‘Well comrade, one of them must have been a bastard - and its not the Senator.’ When Cameron later said he would devote a chapter of his memoirs to deal with Gough, Gough responded that he would devote a footnote in his to Clyde.

But for those of us who knew Clyde as a friend and worked closely with him at different stages of his career the picture is very different. His personal integrity was impeccable. His actions stemmed very much from beliefs formed very early in life and held unchanged for the rest of it. He was no opportunist or rat. Nor was he a wrecker or trickster although he had a strong sense of humour and delighted in puncturing the pompous and hypocritical.

He had far more friends and admirers than enemies, extending across party lines. Among others, Mary Downer, widow of Sir Alec whom Clyde greatly respected, and mother of Alexander, was a valued friend to the end.

Clyde Cameron became a force in the union movement and the ALP at a very young age – he was still in his twenties when he became the State Secretary of the powerful Australian Workers Union in 1941. It coincided with John Curtin coming to power and a period during the war and in post-war reconstruction where Labor looked certain to hold more than a share of office. He entered Parliament in 1949 with reasonable expectation of Federal office but instead was confronted with 23 years of opposition.

During those years he fought a battle with the AWU hierarchy over democratic control, winning court cases and developing high skills in legal and legislative analysis. In South Australia he was one of a very small group of powerbrokers, who kept factional rivalries to a minimum by rejecting a winner-take-all policy and promoting talent over placemen. The South Australian national delegations always caucused and voted together giving it (and Clyde) the ability to often act as honest broker and resolve factional differences.

By 1972 Clyde was extraordinarily well-prepared for office, with a well-developed programme. Contrary to the practice of most Whitlam ministers who inherited the mandarins of the Menzies era, he chose his own Departmental head, Dr Ian Sharp, and gathered round him personal staff to assist him in its implementation. After years in opposition he felt he must get on and do everything as quickly as possible before it was all taken away again.

His new Conciliation and Arbitration Act, drawing on his battles in the AWU, was aimed at giving rights of democratic control to the rank and file and protection to properly-elected officials from arbitrary dismissal by the powerbrokers. One of his chief regrets was that his old enemy the AWU General Secretary Tom Dougherty had died only a couple of months before Clyde came to office thus avoiding being displaced by the new order.

The key to Clyde’s views on any issue lay in his early experience. He was totally was consistent in his views and attitudes over the years in and out of office. His championship of equal pay, flexi hours and other industrial matters has been well-recorded. These benefits flowed to the public service as did another valuable provision, preference to unionists.

While opposed to compulsory unionism, believing this made officials lazy and corrupt, Clyde’s years of hard slog among labourers and lesser paid workers under AWU awards meant that he was supportive of making some benefits available only to those he saw as contributing to the work needed to make the gains. This resulted in a huge increase in membership of the CPSU in particular. Rather than gratitude, Clyde was confronted with more demands and stand and deliver tactics of a type not experienced by the former Liberal administrations.

He was quite disillusioned and his subsequent attacks upon fat cats and opposition to percentage increases in wages was not just an expression of his egalitarian philosophy but coloured by this experience with the white collar unions.

When faced with the sudden rise in unemployment in 1974 two of his solutions were historically based. The National Employment Training Scheme (NEAT) recalled the great post war reconstruction training scheme and gave opportunity for re-training and re-skilling displaced workers. The Regional Employment Development Scheme (REDS), a replica of 1930 relief schemes, funded community projects around the country and was the forerunner of many subsequent state and federal community development grant schemes to the present day. Clyde took considerable delight in the acronyms of these programmes – as he did with TUTA, the national Trade Union Training Authority.

Clyde greatly respected education and training. If he had been born in a later era of educational opportunity he would have taken full advantage of it and become a leader of the bar and a judge. Trade Union Training was one of his great projects and passions. He believed that giving the tools of learning to the job representatives and shop stewards would make the union hierarchy more accountable and their representation more effective and informed. All this would encourage a true industrial partnership. This foreshadowed the Accord of the Hawke/Keating years. It was no coincidence that operatives like Bill Kelty came up through ACTU ranks following involvement in TUTA programmes.

In 1974 after All Grassby’s defeat in Riverina, Gough added the Immigration portfolio to that of Labour. With rising unemployment coupled with shortages in some skills the immigration intake needed to be sensitive to the labor market. His administration was solid although there were one or two eccentricities. For instance, he refused a visa for a highly qualified Indian chef on the grounds that there was no perceived labor need as he knew of many shearers cooks looking for a job. Another was his determined rejection of the performer Alice Cooper despite the best efforts of his young staffers to explain the realities of the pop scene.

His retirement years were spent in his house at West Lakes in Adelaide with Doris, his supportive wife of forty years. He and Mick Young had purchased blocks there in the 1970s. From there he sent his missives on contemporary issues or the decline of Labor values to all who would listen. He remained a great mentor and was constantly on the look out for a new generation of talent to promote in the cause of labour.

Clyde fell ill only a day or so before his birthday gathering which he organised with written invitations each year. It was cancelled, unfortunately sine die, but Clyde will continue to be celebrated and remembered for many years to come.

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FOR THE PAST few decades, the counter-cyclical nature of British and Australian politics has allowed a steady flow of campaign and policy ideas between the UK and Australia.

During their lean years in the 1980s, British Labour drew lessons from the successes of the Hawke-Keating Government. The most profound was the need to marry economic modernisation with the longstanding social justice traditions of both parties. They also needed to challenge the old orthodoxies that were deeply rooted in the earlier struggles and forge modern social democratic agendas with broad appeal to ensure long-lasting reform and electoral success.

Like Tony Blair’s historic win in 1997, Rudd’s 24 November 2007 victory showed the strength of focussing on the future, not the past, but it also demonstrated the value of international friendships in winning election campaigns.

Kevin Rudd committed to work with fresh ideas, energy and determination to tackle Australia’s future challenges. John Howard got stuck in a rut - defending his record, not making a case why he was better placed to face the big challenges confronting Australia.

Labor’s campaign was fought and won on a platform of tackling those challenges - building a world class education system, embracing the long-term funding needs of our public hospital system, meeting the challenges of climate change and water, building the infrastructure for a 21st century economy, balancing fairness and flexibility in the workplaces of the nation and ensuring that working families in Australia get a fair go - all while ensuring our economic prosperity continues.

Milburn observed the 2007 election as part of Labor’s historic election exchange program with New Labour. As a candidate in Tony Blair’s 1997 winning campaign and in his crucial role as the chair of Labour’s campaign strategy team in the 2005 general election, Milburn brought with him the experience of having pitted a young, intelligent leader against a long term government that had lost its way.

Milburn’s insights from these campaigns added impetus to Australian Labor’s 2007 campaign. In coming years, the observations made by New Labour in Australia may well be significant in the campaign against a resurgent Tory Party.

The ongoing friendship with New Labour is founded on a series of cultural, historical and political parallels between the UK and Australia, particularly the Westminster system of Government that brings the Government and Opposition together in close combat on a regular basis.

The success of the observer program was the ability of people like Milburn to bring fresh eyes to our campaign challenges without losing an appreciation of local nuances (such as our compulsory voting system). Milburn noted:

“Kevin Rudd knows that the election is about the future but the future he wants to see is one which is based on long-standing Australian values - a fair go, opportunity for all, a belief in the potential of every citizen.”

Over the years, the flow of people and ideas has grown into a wide-ranging program of friendship and exchange. Friendships such as these will continue to play a key role as Labor and Labour respond to the challenges of government in Australia and the UK.