Can’t afford complacency in power, Wayne Swan warns ALP

ALP President Wayne Swan says winning over young voters is the key to Anthony Albanese’s success.

ALP national president Wayne Swan. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

Labor national president Wayne Swan has urged the party to remain united at its national conference and warned it must lift its primary vote and grow membership if it is to support a long-term federal government and see off populist threats from the left and right.

In a message to the 402 delegates to the party’s 49th national conference to be held next week in Brisbane, obtained by The Australian, the former treasurer and deputy prime minister said Labor cannot afford to be complacent about its mainland success and its longevity does not guarantee a future. “Our parliamentary numbers are strong, but the grassroots of our movement – our membership, our union supporters and our electoral base – need to be continuously nurtured,” Mr Swan says in his presidential message. “Only that will sustain us as an election-winning force beyond the electoral horizon.”

“We must continuously re-energise the progressive side of politics. As avid followers of politics, you will be well aware of the fate of some of the grandest social democratic parties in the world in recent years. Many have simply disappeared into the mists of history.”

The party membership is in open revolt on the AUKUS nuclear defence pact, urging a tougher stance on curbing emissions and ending native forest logging, and party figures are pushing for a $4bn boost to local government. The Left faction is poised to take control of the conference and executive for the first time since 1979. But ministers and faction leaders are confident the government will not be embarrassed at the conference.

Conceding party membership is too low, ageing and narrowly concentrated in cities, Mr Swan says Labor needs to boost member numbers and energise supporters to remain “an electoral winning force” capable of supporting the party in power at the state and national level.

“We all understand that in the long run, winning over the next generation will determine our electoral fate,” he says. “That generation understands the new politics of social and economic inequality instinctively, and is impatient for action to save the planet it will inherit.”

Mr Swan set three challenges for delegates to the national conference: win the battle of ideas by rejecting “trickle-down economics” and US “culture wars”; lift the party’s primary vote to build a coalition of middle- and lower-income earners, and; significantly grow the party’s membership.

The unpopularity of the Coalition and Anthony Albanese’s leadership edge over Peter Dutton will not be enough to win the next election, Mr Swan argues. The party must craft a policy platform focused on addressing economic insecurity and inequality with government intervention.

“In Labor’s 132-year history our fundamental objective has been to improve the material lives of working people,” he says. “This conference will succeed by delivering a Labor platform built on the belief that government must step in and provide the means for reducing economic insecurity and inequality.”

In his rallying cry to the faithful, Mr Swan warned of the risk to democracy posed by the “divisive populists” on the far left, the Greens, and the far right, such as One Nation, who seek to “poach” Labor’s base and “divide” Australia.

“Their slick and angry messages appeal to many but can only wound our democracy just when democracy is so under threat across the world,” he says. “It’s time to reaffirm Labor as the inspiring standard-bearer of decency and progress.”

While praising the party for winning power nationally and dominating the mainland, Mr Swan said the work of the Albanese government is “far from over” and “barely begun”.

“Even though we hold government in every mainland state and territory, there is absolutely no room for complacency in modern politics,” he says. “Even being the oldest continuing social democratic party in the world doesn’t guarantee us a future.”