At Tomorrow Movement we talk a lot about big business in politics. Our mission statement is:
We are an unstoppable movement of young people fighting for a society with good jobs, great public services and a safe climate for all. We are organising young people all over the country to fight for a tomorrow that works for everyone, not just big business.
We know that our politicians continue to choose the interests of big business over everyday people. But, why? Why do our political leaders always seem to vote with billionaire CEOs instead of everyday people? Why are we paying more tax than big corporations? When did we start prioritising profit over people?
To start to unpack these questions we ran a training last week to reflect on ‘Why Labor Loves Big Business’ to uncover the history of vested interests in Australian politics, and what we can do to shift the power back to everyday people.
Why Labor? Not only are Labor currently in government with a super majority, but they have also been a major party in Australia since the start of last century. As a party founded on democratic socialist politics, they are also failing to live up to their potential to create change.
We’ve summarised some of the key learnings from this session below!
The birth of workers politics – the Australian Labor Party
The story of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) of today starts with a story of working class struggle for workers rights.
The first versions of the party ran in state elections, before Federation in 1901. In Queensland, the story of the start of the Labor Party is credited to the 1891 shearers’ strike. The story goes that:
In the 1980s, wool production was one of the largest industries in Australia with tens of thousands of union members. However, the working conditions were consistently poor. Union sheep-shearers went on strike in January to protest a new contract they were asked to sign that would reduce the power of their union.
Following the strike, the union strike committee wrote a manifesto where they explicitly talk about capitalism as the force workers need to unite against.
This Manifesto was read out in September 1892 to establish the Australian Labor Party.
Since this, particularly in the 1970s, the ALP was known for progressive policies like the establishment of the first version of Medicare (thank Gough Whitlam). But since this time we’ve seen Labor side again and again with Big Business (check out our blog on Receipts on Labor and Big Business Vested Interests). So what happened?
The rise of neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is an economic theory which argues that the free market does a better job than governments at ‘managing the economy’ by allocating scarce resources, promoting efficient growth and securing individual liberty. The premise of neoliberalism can be summed up as:
‘Markets work; governments don’t’
In the 1980s, prominent conservative leaders in the UK and the US, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, introduced neoliberalism through policies that:
- privatised government owned industries
- introduced extensive tax cuts
- restricted the power of trade unions to create more “flexible” labour markets
Surprisingly, neoliberal policies were actually introduced by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in Australia.
Labor’s role in cementing big business into politics
Many reflect on the Prices and Incomes Accord, series of agreements between the Bob Hawke Labor government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in effect from 1983 to 1996, as the start of neoliberalism in Australia.
The unions saw the Accord as a compromise, that:
- Moderated the use of industrial action and peg wage rises to inflation
- and in return, promised economic recovery through job creation, price moderation, redistributive tax policies and an expanded “social wage”
In reality these promises were not kept, real wages fell while profits rose, mechanisms for setting wages permanently restructured in bosses’ favour, tax reform favoured the rich, and most elements of an expanded social wage did not materialise.
The role of the Prices and Incomes Accord and Labor’s role in neoliberalism has been thoroughly researched by Elizabeth Humphrys in her book How labour built neoliberalism. Australia’s Accord, the labour movement and the neoliberal project. See this article for a outline of the key findings: https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/review-how-labour-introduced-neoliberalism/
Why did Labor support neoliberalism?
Labor didn’t invent neoliberalism, but was caught up in a larger shift in the political and economic norm.
We can think of Labor as being pulled along by this shift, driven by big business and global forces (US & UK).
This political common sense that shifts the status quo is referred to as political alignment.
A shifting Political Alignment
Political alignment is a way to explain the shifts in the political common sense.
Political alignment describes the social and political forces that align around a shared agenda for society.
If a political alignment wins popular support and political power, it becomes the…
Dominant alignment defines the ‘common sense’ of society, sets the terms of political debate, directs social and economic policy for as long as it remains dominant.
At various points in history, movements, institutions and other groups have come together to create a dominant status quo for politics and society. These dominant ‘political alignments’ have shifted over time, and they also define what is possible in politics at that time.
Since the Hawke-Keating era, neoliberalism has been institutionalised in Australian politics, through the Big Business Alignment, where forces like neoliberalists, culture warriors, resource extractors, and racists/xenophobes/nationalists determine what is common sense in politics (more or less).
In today’s politics, big business calls the shots
Big Business have a vested interest in our politics – they have things they want (like wanting to be taxed less) and are willing to pay for it. And our laws mean that big business aren’t regulated in their access to politicians, largely because of laws that allow political donations and political lobbying.
That’s why fossil fuel companies love to donate to all parties so they can hold power over our politics.
That’s why we need to build people power
Big Business is corrupting our politics- fueling the climate crisis, extracting from the land and labor of First Peoples and everyday people. We’re facing drastic and scary shifts to the far right, and the rise of authoritarianism across the globe. That’s why we need build an alternative political alignment. This could look like the people’s alignment
How do we start building our power?
We need to transform the strength of our communities – a group of people who share common values or interests – into a constituency – a community of people who are standing together to realise a common purpose.
Building power through people to make change
To realise this common purpose we first need to know what our community cares about.
Check out our website here for how you can get involved, and fill in the form below! https://tomorrowmovement.com/get-involved/