ON THE WEEKEND OF JULY 9-10, the august sovereign body of the Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch), the State Conference, met at the Sydney Town Hall. It’s been a while between drinks, and we were all hoping, I think, for an uneventful two days out. If you’ve never been to one, you’ll have to imagine a cross between an undergraduate debate, a dissenting Protestant worship service, Modern Times, a crowd scene in an Altman movie and Thunderdome. But, you know, in a good way.
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| Open microphone, with Johno at the head of the queue |
We could hardly have enjoyed a more remarkable than the last one previous—the 2009 Conference which saw Joe Tripodi and Ian Macdonald effectively sacked on the floor of Conference during the Premier’s address—and nobody wanted a repeat of the 2008 debacle which spawned this remarkable book, and which I’ll always remember for this image.
We enjoyed an acrimonious and depressing Rules debate, a disappointing postponement of debate on marriage equality, a relatively good set of other debates on policy, and a frankly cathartic open microphone session in response to the Watkins/Chisholm review (pictured above). You’re unlikely to do better than Radio National, for once, for a wrapup of the weekend, however I’d caution that the journo is wrong that the Chinese Meal is in any way a subsidiary or unimportant part of proceedings.
That’s as incorrect as can be.
It certainly isn’t the food which is worth commenting on. Feeding any very large group of people quickly and cheaply is never likely to result in anything culinarily special. Even Jesus knew that the best way to the hearts of function guests was not by improving the menu. Not that it was bad, either: there’s always a place in my stomach for minced chicken in lettuce, king prawns, pepper beef and everything with stacks of salt and garlic. I’ll admit, alas, that I’m an eater of the kind who prizes umami rather less than metric volume. In any case, after a day’s thirsty work on and above the floor of Conference the delegates and unionists tend to head straight for the provided companion red and white bottles on each table, as they’d say on Iron Chef, a liquid illustration of the opposing positions of the day, providing each other an alcoholic counterpoint. A few of us’d probably just call it dialectic, and condemn the postmodernists with their bourgeois neologisms.
(I couldn’t join in, this year, alas. I’m on medical instructions to avoid alcohol, as the result of the dental work I posted about earlier, and for once I actually arrived on the Sunday morning chipper and enthusiastic. It’s rather a new experience; generally on the second morning everyone slumps in their seats, solemn and chastened, feeling like they’ve been slowly crucified overnight, with the exception of the Shoppies who’ve come in late from Mass at St Patrick’s.)
The journo is also wrong to describe the dinner as a single affair. Quite the contrary, Conference divides itself on Saturday night into its constituent blocs of Socialist Left and Centre Unity. We have different meals at different restaurants, we disrespect different speakers, we have our own in-jokes and revere quite different Labor mythologies. At the Right’s, I’m led to believe, the community of belief pays tribute to its own heritage and efficient organisational skills. The Left divides itself between displays of righteous enthusiasm that’d make Chuck D and Flava Flav proud, and the quiet, introspective self-reliant inner enlightenment of our own Buddha of Werriwa, his arms across the two chairs on either side, his tie askew, a smile of attachment-free self-possession on his face, as his disciples await his next koan. Still, the spirit of the events is a communal agreement to keep coming back to fight the fight next time.
If I ever find myself in a political organisation where I feel entirely comfortable, where a majority agrees with my own views, or where I approve even largely of the direction of the leadership, I’ll know that that’s when I’m wasting my time. There’s nothing more toxic to civil society than accelerating ultra-purism and rejectionism in politics—that’s politics as practiced by Unabombers.1 There has to be a balance, though. Yes, there’s a lot which is very very wrong with Labor, and a lot of what Conference is about only makes it ever-wronger, in a descending spiral of wrong.
If, however, the genuine solidarity of sharing pork ribs, enormous bowls of fried rice, and stir-fried Chinese broccoli, though, could be acknowledged as the central part of the event that it is—we’d be one step on our way to a better world.
1 For this phrase, thank you (or something like it) to Delegate Jamie Clements, whose bizarre and buffoonish speech in the rules debate spawned the twitter hashtag #labor4unabombers, and I suspect, the sale of quite a few ALP hoodies from the official stall.
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