It is mere common sense that Anthony Albanese should seek to stop the nutty Left of the Labor Party from condemning the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine initiative, or demanding a specific date on which Canberra must extend diplomatic recognition to a non-existent Palestinian state.
At one level you have to admire the Labor Left. The sheer folly of its addictive demands for pointless gestures and empty, counter-productive symbolism, its determination to embarrass and harm even the friendliest government, to cut short if it possibly can the electoral acceptance of Labor by the mainstream Australian electorate – in all this there is a kind of grandeur of absurdity.
No one will ever accuse these people of being reasonable, or of selling out to common sense.
The Albanese government is the most left-wing Labor administration since Gough Whitlam. It is delivering bucket loads of policy to the left, on industrial relations, industry policy, climate change, welfare, tax, every form of identity politics, support for far-reaching constitutional change, etc. But for the Left, too much is never enough.
The two senior figures in the Labor Left are Albanese himself and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. If the Left cannot abide government by them, it cannot abide anything in the real world.
The Left’s opposition to the AUKUS subs is all but insane. The debate has become frequently ridiculous, with the idea that conventional subs are good because they will only defend Australia’s coastline, whereas nuclear-powered subs are bad because they allow Australia’s military to operate a long way from our shores, and this could offend China. This kindergarten formulation completely misunderstands the nature of submarines. Subs are an asymmetric weapon precisely because any potential enemy has no idea where they are at any given time. Our Collins-class subs are already the conventional subs with the longest operating range, in order to give us something of this asymmetric effect.
The AUKUS subs would enhance our sovereignty and national power by enhancing greatly what we already do. Unless you think Australia should never defend itself, it’s hard to see why more effective, conventionally armed submarines are worse than less effective, conventionally armed submarines. Unless of course you have a psychotic phobia about anything nuclear, even though the nuclear propulsion of these subs will embody no element of nuclear proliferation.
However, it would not necessarily be disastrous for Labor if an anti-AUKUS motion were put to conference and decisively defeated. That was the pattern under the immensely successful Hawke government. Instead of just a factional fix before conference, Albanese and his ministers and delegates should be touring Labor branches, unions and community groups around Australia and making the positive case for the AUKUS agreement and subs.
These sit squarely within the traditions of social democratic stewardship of national security. AUKUS, after all, is pioneered by a Democrat in Washington and supported by Labour in the UK.
The real criticism of the Albanese government on defence is that, spooked by regular, vicious outbursts from Paul Keating, and the relentless negativity on the left, all of which incidentally serves China’s interests perfectly, it has decided not to spend one dollar of additional money on defence, in fact to cut defence spending in numerous small ways, and therefore run down defence capabilities in almost every department except AUKUS.
On Palestine, the Left’s resolution is absurd. No Palestinian state exists and this is primarily because Palestinian leaders have historically rejected the generous compromises offered under former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. There has never been a serious offer by Palestinian leadership that commits to an end of claims against Israel, a serious commitment to stop attacks on Israel and a real acceptance of the right of a Jewish state to exist in the Middle East.
No resolution passed at an Australian Labor conference will have the slightest effect on the conflict in the Middle East. But it could well embarrass, and even undermine, a Labor government.
The current slightly muddled compromise, that a Labor government wants to recognise a Palestinian state but will do so only when conditions permit, is actually not too bad. In the real world, not too bad is often as good as it gets. But no one ever accused the Left of living in the real world.
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