Professor Ross Fitzgerald says the history of the factions go back to the fact that the Australian Labor Party was formed by the Trade Union Movement and Labor Movement. He says like minded unions joined together. Fitzgerald says he recently finished a book about Alan ‘The Red Fox’ Reid whose great coup was to get the photographs of the 36 faceless men (there was one woman!) He says Arthur Calwell, Labor Party Leader and his deputy Gough Whitlam were forced to wait outside the Hotel Kingston at 1am to be told what Labor policy was. He says Rudd was ousted because of an agreement between the right wing unions and members of the Labor right who informed the Vic left that the Prime Ministership could be delivered to Gillard. He says Gillard was on the left of the Labor Party and it will be interesting to see how she behaves in terms of the factions now that she is PM. He says she has not rewarded members of the Fed Labor Party who supported her yet with ministries. He believes that deals would have been done around many things but one cannot be sure. He says if Rudd left Parliament today, he would get a pension of $600,000 per year forever. Fitzgerald believes that Rudd may be our new Foreign Minister if Gillard wins. According to Fitzgerald, it is okay to ask if someone is of the left or right faction because it is important to understand where our Parliamentary leaders come from and what values they hold. He says those in the left of the Labor Party today are more closely tied to the more militant element in the Trade Unions movement and they hold different ideas about foreign policy. He says members of the left are less likely to be enamoured by the American alliance than those in the right. He says schools such as Melbourne Boys High School, Mac.Robertson School or North Sydney would do much better because their students are more capable compared to those in Western Sydney. Emberson says this is interesting because Gillard is allegedly from the left. Fitzgerald adds that she was involved in leftist unions and the education movement when she was younger.

Fitzgerald says it is also interesting to see if she would lose votes from declaring that she is an Atheist, adding that he is also an Atheist. According to Fitzgerald, the Christian lobby is still very powerful in Australia. He says it is important to realise that historically, the Australian Workers Union have been integrally connected with Labor Party parliamentarians. Fitzgerald states that the Labor right came from people associated with the Australian Workers Union. He says the left believes in much more government intervention in the economy and supporting the under privileged in the society. On the other hand, he says the Labor right in NSW where Graham Richardson has been a strong force for many years is more concerned with the exercise of power. Fitzgerald is about to leave for Canberra because Laurie Oakes will do the launch of their book Alan ‘The Red Fox’ Reid.

Professor Fitzgerald says PM Gillard needs to give the impression that she is not an autocrat like Kevin Rudd was and it is damaging that Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner will not stand again. Black says PM Gillard’s main challenge is to communicate with the public and get past the sense of anger. Hafner says those in PM Gillard’s electorate are positive about the new PM and she has put Werribee on the political map. Despoja says any woman in a position of power has experienced treatment close to double standards which PM Gillard has experienced already but some stereotypes will diminish. She expects an election sooner rather than later.

Labor’s shadow men stuck knife into Rudd

Political commentators say largely unknown Labor Party factional strongmen have shown their control of the Labor Caucus by engineering the political demise of Kevin Rudd.

Mr Rudd was ousted by his deputy Julia Gillard in an unopposed leadership spill after it became clear that he had no chance of marshalling the numbers to prevail in a contested leadership vote.

Some of the strongmen behind his demise are union bosses, while others have made the transition into Parliament as members and senators.

Apart from wielding power, there is one thing that they have in common: they are largely unknown to the Australian public.

David Feeney, Mark Arbib, Bill Shorten, Bill Ludwig, Karl Bitar, and Don Farrell are hardly household names, yet they hold sway within the Labor ranks.

Political commentator Professor Ross Fitzgerald says the Labor Caucus largely reflects the views of the factional strongmen.

“The factions these days in the main reflect the Caucus,” he said.

“But in terms of the exercise of power, when push comes to shove, the factions, and especially the Right faction, wields tremendous power in the Australian Labor Party federally and in most states.

“For Kevin Rudd to say as he did that he wanted to break the power of the factions is laughable.

“I would have thought this is the factions’ revenge. He went down like a house of cards.”

Professor Fitzgerald earned his spurs in Queensland, home to Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard’s new deputy Wayne Swan.

But the state is also the power base of Senator Joe Ludwig and his father, Australian Workers Union (AWU) national president Bill Ludwig.

The Ludwigs control the AWU along with the AWU’s shining light in Federal Parliament, another Rudd coup plotter, Victorian MP Bill Shorten.

Professor Fitzgerald says Mr Shorten, along with fellow strongman Mark Arbib, will do extremely well out of the overthrow of Mr Rudd.

The World Today has spoken to former premiers, MPs and Labor stalwarts, who all agree that Mr Rudd suffered at the power of the factions.

They also say that internal polling conducted by the ALP showed the devastating effect Mr Rudd would have on the Government’s election prospects if he remained leader.

One Labor source says the internal polling reflected a view much worse than Newspoll’s own published poll.

The source says that when faced with the evidence the heavyweights came together at the beginning of this week to try and convince Julia Gillard she had to challenge.

While the right wing of the party would have preferred to push one of their own into the top job there was simply no alternative but to tap the left-winger Ms Gillard on the shoulder.

One insider says the move to oust Mr Rudd only had one focus, to ensure Labor won the next election.

However, another source says there is also a sense of irony, as many of those same factional bosses who helped oust Rudd had also given him advice that helped undo his popularity with voters.

The source says it was not just Mr Rudd who over promised and under-delivered, but it was Mr Rudd who paid the political price.
N

Central Queensland is battling to develop, recruit and retain a skilled workforce in the resources, health and education sectors. This was highlighted in the Minerals Council of Australia and the Chamber of Minerals and Energy Western Australia response to Skills Australia’s Foundations for the Future 2009 position paper and to the 2010 Review of Regional Loading: Issues for Regional Provision. The latter states: “The minerals industry places a high value on the provision of regional higher education and the engagement of people who live in regional and remote areas in higher education.”

Social inclusion is not our top priority. Indeed, many would argue that we would be better excluding metropolitan Australia from riding on the back of our wealth of resources.

What Fitzgerald understands is that regions such as central Queensland live in a global economy in which we have to compete to survive. The resources sector requires a skilled para-professional and professional workforce. Our ability to provide and satisfy this workforce and their families is one of the key factors in securing the investment that we need and that Australia needs.

The population of central Queensland is necessarily geographically widely dispersed and therefore far more expensive to support with health, transport and education. We are also relatively few in numbers and therefore secure fewer seats in parliament than our metropolitan and outer metropolitan cousins.

The memo we would like to send to Gillard has already been sent: the Rockhampton Regional Council (with the support of the Gladstone, Mackay and Isaac regions) is suggesting a dual-sector university that brings together the existing Central Queensland Institute of TAFE and Central Queensland University into a new organisation that is funded to meet the challenge of skills shortages for a highly dispersed population. It won’t be cost-effective in terms of the bums on seats that the more densely populated metropolitan centres can achieve, but it will be cost-effective in terms of winning the investment that a resource-based Australia cannot thrive without.

There is no doubt that the Rudd government’s stimulus package has helped to offset some of the worse ills of the global financial crisis. There is also no doubt that the resources of regional Australia paid much of the bill. What Gillard does not appear to have front and centre in her mind is that she should be giving regional education a top spot on her priority list.

The Australian June 23, 2010