A Letter to Generation Next: Why Labor

Kim Carr has been a Labor Senator for Victoria for twenty years. He has been a member of the Australian Labor Party for nearly 40 years and a member of Australian Labor Party’s National Executive since 1994. He is a leading figure in Labor’s left faction.

Senator Carr was born in Tumut, New South Wales, and educated at the University of Melbourne, where he obtained a Master of Arts degree in history and a Diploma of Education. He was a teacher at Glenroy Technical School for almost a decade before becoming a policy analyst for Victorian government ministers Joan Kirner and Andrew McCutcheon.

Kim Carr was elected to the Australian Senate at the March 1993 election. However he filled a casual vacancy following John Button’s resignation. He joined the frontbench in March 1996 as manager of opposition business in the Senate. In opposition he was variously Shadow Minister for Innovation Industry, Science and Research, Public Administration and Open Government, Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation, Arts, Housing, Urban Development, Local Government and Territories, and represented Labor on Education in the Senate.

After Labor’s victory in the 2007 federal election, he was appointed Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. He was reelected in the 2010 election and was reappointed to the Cabinet as Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in the 42nd Parliament. In 2012–13 he was Minister in the portfolios of Manufacturing, Defence Materiel. and Minister for Human Services.

Kim Carr resigned from the Ministry on 22 March 2013.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

1 In pursuit of your dreams

2 In pursuit of politics

3 In pursuit of party reform

4 In pursuit of progress

5 In pursuit of the good society

6 In pursuit of ingenuity

7 In pursuit of knowledge

8 In pursuit of happiness

9 Dream large

Epilogue: It’s time again

Appendix

Notes

Dedication

The genesis of this book was the idea of a letter to my four children: Laura, Sarah, Ruth and Seamus. Throughout their lives they have had to watch from the sidelines the shifting tides of my political engagement. They have witnessed the highs and lows of the political struggles that I have been involved in without necessarily having the context and significance of those struggles fully explained. This book is the first instalment in trying to fill the gaps. It is often said that our parents influence, if not our politics, then at least our core values. So I dedicate this book to my children in the hope that they will understand and perhaps embrace the values that have underpinned my work and the work of generations of passionate Labor activists. The work I have done when not with you was always done for you, to help in Labor’s efforts to leave you a richer, fairer, greener Australia.

Acknowledgements

As a politician, you achieve very little by yourself. I extend my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked in my office for their efforts, frank advice and boundless energy over the years.

Politics is very much a team game, especially in the Labor Party.

It may well have been published in a short time frame but this book is the product of years of debate, discussion and political experiences.

I want to particularly thank Jennifer Bowles. I also want to thank all my workmates, current and former, for their constructive advice on various iterations of this manuscript. The improvements they have made are gratefully received and whatever errors remain are mine.

I extend my gratitude to the editorial team at MUP, who helped me to more clearly articulate my argument for why people should vote Labor.

Lastly, to my wife, Carole, without whom none of this would have been possible. Carole has put up with twenty years of my ruminations as a Labor Senator on these questions, often in less sanitised forms. Her counsel has been invaluable, as has her ability to make sure I never forgot what my family looked like.

1

In pursuit of your dreams

In September 2005 the former Labor leader Mark Latham went to the University of Melbourne to deliver a lecture. His audience was mainly students and young people. His subject, in the main and as ever, was Mark Latham.

Along the way he made a remark that was offensive in its cynicism: ‘In a gathering such as this, I’m sure there are some young idealistic people interested in running for parliament. I have to say to you, as frankly and sincerely as I can, don’t do it.’

The system, he continued, was ‘fundamentally sick and broken’ and there were ‘many more productive and satisfying ways’ in which such young Australians could contribute to society.

What a stunning slap in the face to the men and women of Labor who gave him their time and trust. What an insult to the people who voted him into parliament. What a sneer at the idealistic young Australians who’d come to hear him.

Latham has certainly found a niche for his brand of dyspeptic commentary in the anti-Labor press—not bad for a former leader, even an embittered one. Or perhaps he says it best himself: ‘If politics is show business for ugly people, then political commentary in Australia is payback from ugly old men.’

Latham’s comments pander to the most cynical sentiments of the disillusioned and the conservative-minded. They propagate defeat and despair. Maybe there ought to be a restrictive trading clause on former politicians as part of their retirement package.

I believe his comments were not only gratuitous but also wrong. Politics matters. And even if there’s a kernel of truth in what he said, if indeed the system is not as healthy as it ought to be, who better to mend it than the young people he was lecturing to—the best-educated, best-connected, most technologically adept generation in the nation’s history? You.

And if those who denigrate politics and who would dissuade and drive our best and brightest away from it have their way, where would that leave us? Stuck with those who ‘broke it’ in the first place, those who perhaps take comfort in and profit from the status quo?

This book is an argument about why political organisation generally, and the Labor Party in particular, is required if you want to change the world, if you want to affect the distribution of power. Not everyone wants to be a politician. But taking an interest in politics doesn’t necessarily require you to stand for parliament or your local council. There’s nothing wrong with ambition, but there’s also nothing wrong with wanting to be actively involved without making it your full-time job.

It’s all too easy to criticise people who make an effort. The best goals in politics are often kicked from the spectators’ side of the fence. Or so those spectators—Monday morning’s experts—would have us believe. Anyone who watches a football match will know how easy it is to offer advice from the sidelines, with a pie in your hand and your bum on a seat. But the real thing is happening over that white line, out on the field of play.

Politics remains a fight over ‘who gets what, when and how’—a definition that political scientist Harold Lasswell coined during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Technology may be changing the pace and forms of engagement—just as it is transforming the way we do business—but the fundamentals remain: how do we relate to one another? How do we give expression to our aspirations? How do we ensure that we leave this place better than we found it? I believe that these are endeavours best achieved through politics.

Politics is exciting. You meet new people and encounter new ideas, you argue and you extend yourself and, in doing so, understand the world better.

Social democratic politics is about understanding the world ‘as it is’. Global, interconnected, cosmopolitan, technological, volatile, challenged both environmentally and economically. Social democrats are realists, but open to new ideas. We support the concept of the citizen, their rights and responsibilities. Social democracy is about making this world, as it is, better, richer, fairer and greener at the global, national and local level.

For social democrats government has a role and public agencies matter. Our political instincts are interventionist but not utopian. We respect the power of science and technology and want to harness it for social and economic innovation. We are prepared to challenge privilege and inequality, we are internationalist and reject nostalgia, scaremongering and scapegoating.

These are the social democratic instincts. And in the modern world these are the instincts that matter: they will make a difference to our country and our world.

For young people I believe this is the stance that gives the best chance for a better future. It’s a politics of enhancing, of optimism and of resolve.

This is the politics I joined up for and have worked for as a member of the Labor Party, a Labor senator and as a minister in a Labor government. A social democratic Australia is what I want to achieve. Social democracy is worth striving for. It gives full meaning to principles of democratic engagement, and puts us on the way to achieving our full human potential. If you’re of the view that things could be better, that changes have to be made—and who isn’t?—you’ll understand that changes won’t occur without determined action. The status quo is deeply entrenched, and to build something new and better will take a lot of effort. Taking responsibility is the first step. Working with others comes next. Working together, you can create a better society.

You don’t have to accept the boundaries of traditional thinking, but some lessons can be learned from the experience of others. It is worth taking note of the scar tissue from previous battles. The knee-jerk response of anti-politics thinking or the promotion of apathy is never the answer—however commonplace it has become today. Change won’t come if you won’t work for it. If you don’t agitate, nothing moves.

‘Agitators,’ said Oscar Wilde in ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, ‘are a set of interfering, meddling people who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent among them.’

And that, he added, is why they were so absolutely necessary.

Agitators are the catalyst for social progress. Agitators are the people who get things done. Australia needs more agitators meddling and interfering with the status quo. Are you up for the job?

Reasons to go—or reasons to stay

While I was appalled by what Latham said in that lecture, some of the points he raised need to be addressed; in particular, the long list of so-called reasons he sets out to deter young Australians from taking an interest in public life. I address them not to give prominence to one man’s jaundiced opinion, but because they are all too common in popular commentary today. I want to challenge them. I want to put forward reasons of my own why you, the next generation, frankly should give a damn.

Let’s start with the problem of public apathy, a problem Latham sees as endemic in the community today—and then, apparently, seeks to promote. Apathy is the most common but also the weakest of any argument about politics. Politics is about the representation and organisation of people. If you aren’t any good at it, don’t blame the people or ‘politics’.

There is a view that people in contemporary society are smug, or greedy, or just plain lazy. I think people are very much as they always were, with all their faults and redeeming features. They just deal the best they can with the stresses of modern life.

There is always a temptation to look back to some imagined golden age. I often think of my own early days in the Labor Party organising for the Socialist Left. I was working as a teacher in north-west Melbourne. Organising had to be done in my own time, including on lunch breaks—if I could get near the school’s one public phone and had the coins to feed it. There were no mobiles, no internet, no social media.

Today we’re surrounded with gadgets,