Refugee Rights Action Network WA
By Andrew Martin
(This article appears in Issue 37: December-January 2012 of Direct Action and is not representative of RRAN as a whole)
The ALP national conference in Sydney on December 3 and 4 should present an opportunity for the ALP to reassess its policy of mandatory detention and an opportunity to adopt a more humane approach towards refugees. But no one is waiting with bated breath. Since its election in 2007, the ALP government has reinforced the Howard government’s demonising of people seeking protection from war and persecution.
Regardless of which faction has the numbers or what factions the cabinet is made up of, the highly centralised right-wing Labor leaders have no intention of allowing any real debate within the party. The conferences have steadily become stage-managed affairs and US-style celebrity events.
Refugee rights protest Broadmeadows, Melbourne. July 9, 2011.
While the ALP may dominate the leadership of every trade union in the country, it has no real mass base among the working class. Most of its members are disempowered and disillusioned. With every right-wing knee-jerk twist and turn, its membership falters and people’s hopes in it as an institution for progressive social change are further eroded.
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