Union link gives Labor an edge

DESPITE the long-term decline in the percentage of workers signed up to unions in this country, the significant role they play in the running of the Australian Labor Party has endured.

While the Coalition likes to hit Labor over the head with the notion that it is controlled by unions, implying when doing so that Labor is not a party of mainstream voters, the fact is the strong base unions provide has turned modern Labor into the natural party of government.

"Natural party of government" was once the mantra of the conservatives. Not any more.

It is an ironic occurrence that during the two decades that union membership has declined as a percentage of the workforce from 42 per cent in 1988 to less than one in five workers today the organisational strength the union movement creates for the Labor Party has help deliver it an overwhelming majority of state and federal election victories.

In 1988 the Bob Hawke-led Labor Party had been in power for five years. Labor went on to win the next two elections before an 11-year period of Coalition rule at the federal level.

In 2007 Kevin Rudd again seized control of the treasury benches for the Labor Party and, despite some recent problems finding his line and length against new Liberal leader Tony Abbott, he doesn't look like losing power federally in the foreseeable future.

At the state level Labor's dominance is all the more apparent. In NSW it has been in power continuously since 1995, in Queensland and Tasmania since 1998 and in Victoria since 1999.

Before a surprise election defeat in Western Australia last year Labor had been in power there since 2001, and it remains in power in South Australia (since 2002 and ahead in the polls for next year's election) as well as both territories.

Before last year's WA election defeat for the Carpenter government, Labor had won nearly two dozen consecutive state and territory elections, including the 2007 federal election.

Although Labor's electoral dominance has not necessarily resulted in good governance - some Labor state administrations have presided over ageing infrastructure and failed to tackle much needed economic reforms or refused to fulfil the party's social policy script, for example by addressing the debilitating effect of poker machines - it is clear Labor deserves the tag of the natural party of government.

Professionalised politics requires money, manpower and discipline.

The unions give Labor all three, but it is the final point that is the most important.

Unions control 50 per cent of Labor state conferences, down from 60 per cent ahead of reforms pushed through by Simon Crean in 2002. That gives unions voting blocks, allowing them to band together into factional cohorts and helping shape policy direction and the personnel who enter parliament on the Labor side.

It becomes a circular build-up of power.

Parliamentarians owe their careers to the union movement, and they repay that debt by preserving the unions' role in the Labor Party even though unions in the workforce continue to slip because of changes to the labour market (decentralisation, growth in the service sector, as well as non-unionised casual and part-time workers).

In fact, the long-term declining role of unions in the workforce has even been moderately turned around on the back of the role unions played in undermining Work Choices ahead of the previous election.

Latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on the percentage of workers who are unionists recorded a slight increase on the back of Julia Gillard's new industrial relations policies.

Put side-by-side with the Liberal Party, the union movement has given Labor a revenue source the conservatives don't have, when disclosure provisions are making it more difficult for businesses to favour the Liberals.

This is especially important when a party is in opposition and finds it difficult to secure business donations (which usually flow to the party able to make policy decisions, therefore the party likely to win the forthcoming election).

As party memberships fall, resulting in greater difficulties marshalling people to hand out how to vote cards and spruik for votes come election time, Labor has a ready-made group of workers willing and able to do the hard yards of electioneering.

In an age of media intrusion into the manner in which parties operate, discipline is an important way of ensuring maverick MPs don't detract from the central message the leadership group is trying to deliver.

With many Labor MPs schooled in an environment of union discipline (academic studies have suggested as many as half of the parliamentary Labor Party previously worked within the union movement), they are better placed than Liberals (who tend to be drawn from a wider cross-section of professions) when it comes to sticking to the script.

Again, during the dark days of opposition the union movement provides a structure that preserves discipline among MPs that the Liberal Party minus incumbency struggles to generate.

This failure has never been more apparent on the conservative side of the parliament than in the second half of this year when Malcolm Turnbull was publicly executed by his colleagues.

But unions do more than just impose discipline, as important as that is in modern politics; they also challenge the parliamentary Labor Party at appropriate moments. For example, Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes was a vocal critic of Rudd's refugee policies in the wake of the Oceanic Viking, and other union leaders followed suit.

But don't expect union leaders such as Howes to make pains of themselves next year. Timing is everything in politics and Labor-affiliated union leaders toe the party line in election years. Only when Labor is in government can it form policies that are sympathetic to the labour movement.

Whether Liberals like it or not, instead of simplistically attacking the organisational structure of the Labor Party that gives unions a bigger than proportionate say, they should be looking at how to put in place a similar structure that draws on their natural constituencies of small and big business.

The fundraising arms of the Liberal Party in place go some way towards formalising such an arrangement with the big end of town, but perhaps it should be extended to include small businesses and entrepreneurs having a say in the running of the party.

Exactly how to do that would take some thought, but if Liberals want to become more electorally competitive it is a move worth thinking about.