The departure of Senator Fatima Payman from the Australian Labor Party has bought up strong feelings, and old arguments about the Australian Labor Party.

It is easy to find commentary saying that the Australian Labor Party is doing poorly. You’ll find it in today’s newspapers, or yesterday, or last decade’s, or the decade before, or all the way back to labour’s emergence as a political force in the 1890s. There are lots of different ways that Labor’s success or failure: some objective, some subjective, some self-serving, some malicious.

The best measure of the ALP’s success is how much of its platform has become Government policy. In opposition, the answer is none. If measured by its record of winning government, the ALP has never been stronger than in the last 20 years. Most Premiers and Chief Ministers are Labor members most of the time, and three of the last six Federal elections have returned a Labor Prime Minister. Earlier Labor was strong at some times, in some places across Australia. It was only after the early 2000s comeback that the 1980s period of dominance seemed like a new normal, rather than happy aberration.

A common counterpoint is that the ALP is failing by lacking in policy ambition and delivery in office. This criticism is far harder to refute because it is built on a logical fallacy. For many of the people who run this case, the facts are irrelevant, and the examples are cherry picked to make the case. This critique will often be expressed as a lament that the Labor Party used to be more left-wing, but has now capitulated. Not only are such historical analogies generally false because the context and constraints of government have changed, they’re also highly selective. For those who make these arguments, Labor is not good enough, and never will be. This tradition of criticism is as old as the Labor Party itself.

The component of that thinking I am seeking to highlight is not the bad faith aspect, but the theory of change. A theory of change is a theory of how and why it is thought that a set of actions will lead to a policy, or action decision. There are lots of theories of change - they’re how our actions will lead to the outcomes we want. Examples can include war, prayer, bureaucracy, lobbying, peaceful or disruptive protest, and all kinds of campaign activities. Many social movements are careful to be explicit in their theory of change, but even those that are not as self-aware have one.

The theory of change I’ve identified above is oppositional – ‘If we campaign against Labor, it will govern better.’ This theory of change can only exist in a time and place where the assumption of a Labor government is reasonable. 

The contradiction at the heart of the oppositional theory of change is that it both treats Labor winning elections as an externality (something that will happen anyway), and something that Labor will change its behaviour to achieve (an internality). That contradiction is manageable, or at least unproblematic in practice, so long as only a few groups are operating with that theory of change, and are doing so with only limited success. The more widespread that theory of change is, the more likely it is to become self-defeating by ending the era of Labor Governments. 

That this theory of change is especially popular in high socio-economic areas populated overwhelmingly with professionals and capital-holding classes is not especially concerning. Wealthy inner city areas like Balmain, Brunswick, or Bulimba may have a history of working class residents, but changing demographics and housing markets mean they now have far more in common with wealthy areas now represented by Teals in the Federal Parliament. That the post-materialist electorates are seeking to be represented by post-materialist MPs is democracy working as it should. 

The geographic concentration of the post-materialist wealthy in narrow strips of land in the inner cities has created majorities for post-materialist MPs, of both the Green and Teal variety. Both groups strongly adhere to a theory of change that a minority (specifically the minority they represent) can and should use electoral and parliamentary tactics to impose their will on the majority. The strongest case of this anti-democratic behaviour has been displayed by the Greens, who openly ran the strategy of using their 11 Senators (14% of one chamber) to demand that the Federal Government financially blackmail democratically elected State governments to change tenancy laws. The normalisation of anti-democratic tactics should concern all Australians who care for democracy, even though the tactic failed on that occasion. 

The risk that these anti-ALP theories if change pose are real, but when used by political competitors form part of a healthy democracy. At elections the competition is not just one of policy, values, and competence, but also a contest about the nature of the system of government. The philosophy of what government is, or how to conceptualize society is just as valid a part of voting as funding for schools, or the regulation of sheep stations.

The real risk faced by the ALP today is that these challenging theories of change have been internalised by many inside its own organisation. Across the parliamentary ranks, the union movement, and in the branches it is common to hear competing, discordant theories of change. 

The Australian Labor Party at its foundation settled on a theory of change that people can come together in its organisation, with a variety of ambitions both personal and on policy, and work together to achieve a collective maximisation of delivery. In this theory of change solidarity, the deal was everyone had to compromise in their personal ambition, in order to deliver the collective ambition. That theory of change, the Labor theory of change, relies on all participants taking some responsibility for the welfare of the whole. This unity of tactics has allowed for a great diversity of policy positions to cohere into a force that can generate parliamentary majorities.

The ALP’s solidarity theory of change faces many challenges. The ALP’s failure to consistently communicate its theory of change has left it poorly understood, and open to attack. Firstly the challenge of having power. Out of power, it is easy to imagine that the resources of the State are far greater than they actually are. The ability of Government to do things is not just limited by revenue and the competence of Ministers, but to a far greater extent by the willingness of citizens and public servants to go along with the change, and their creativity in generating perverse outcomes. In government, every aspiration not met can easily turn to bitterness, especially those aspirations not promised, but vaguely hoped for. That challenge is not unique to Labor, or even democracy. Many dictators have been torn down by henchmen disappointed in the distribution of insufficient spoils.

Currently, without a coherent theory of change, and therefore with an inconsistent approach to power, the risks to Labor are heightened. The normalising of damaging the whole for the benefit of the individual is gathering pace. Some say that by crossing the floor on a purely symbolic motion, Senator Fatima Payman expressed her conscience, and showed the diversity of opinion within Labor. In doing so, however, she engaged a different theory of change than the Labor theory of change. In doing so she also provided an example of the anti-Labor oppositional theory of change succeeding. The backing she received not just in the Parliamentary ranks, but also in unions and branches suggests there is an appetite within Labor to alter Labor’s theory of change to a pluralist theory of change, where different theories of change coexist.

The harm of the oppositional theory of change is not the only challenge. Another example of contradictory theories of change occurred with the stage 3 tax cuts. From opposition, and into government, Anthony Albanese and Labor took a position that they would not alter that taxation policy in government. A strong part of their campaign against Scott Morrison’s LNP was about integrity in government – that an excess of lies and obfuscation from politicians was damaging Australia, and that Labor intended to offer a higher level of honesty and certainty in Government. Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the distribution of taxation, the contests over theories of change in this example were substantive. A range of civil society actors, most vehemently the Australia Institute, used the oppositional theory of change to suggest that Labor didn’t really believe in the policy they were promising, and that they could be pushed into changing the stage 3 tax cuts. When Labor did eventually do exactly as the Australia Institute campaigned for, they claimed it was due to changed economic circumstances, rather than due to the campaign. In doing so, they undermined, or at least cast aside the integrity in government rationale they had been using since their time in opposition. They have continued to show increased policy flexibility since. 

Whilst some say the Referendum result was a negative turning point for the Labor primary vote, an examination of the polling shows that it was several months earlier, when the relationship of trust with the voter was dispensed with. That occurred about the time that Federal Labor switched policy on taxation, and dispensed with the coherence of their theory of change.

The risk for Labor’s ability to meaningfully express power isn’t from the potential of altering its theory of change. The risk is that the increasing diversity of theories of change within the movement leave nobody taking responsibility for the welfare of the whole. If Labor is neither unified on policy nor tactics, there is a potential for the organization to collapse due to a lack of anyone, other than its employees caring for it. In such a scenario, a slight downturn in the number of jobs would quickly spiral out of control. Alternatively, Labor could transform from being unified by tactics to being unified by policy. That path risks the endless schism witnessed in other left wing parties as the tolerance for differing views is lost.

There is no lack of ideas about how things could, or should be done. Often, in reading or observing debate about policy, clear ideas about a theory of change are expressed, then glossed over as the conversation turns back to the merits of one particular policy or another. Often it is easier to reach compromise on the policy point than on the competing theories of change expressed by activists and political participants. Theories of change are deeply embedded in people’s sense of self and identity. They are talked of in terms of moral rights and wrongs. To question the logic of a theory of change is often taken as rude and confrontational. Many friendships, and potential alliances for good have been lost in such confrontations. 

The challenge for Labor in the next few years is to either return to or develop a new unified theory of change. If it becomes normal that politicians, unions and members do any old thing for whatever reason comes to mind at the time, its ability to coherently function as a party could quickly dissolve. We must find a way to reach a new consensus on Labor’s theory of change, and therefore approach to power, or risk losing the Party that delivered the world’s best conditions for working people.

Daniel Gerrard is Secretary of ACT Fabians.

You might also enjoy reading 'Still a Party of National Government? Australian Labor’s Challenge' by David Reeves which can be viewed here.