Power for its own sake, and to hell with courage – Labor has lost its way

In 1963, Arthur Calwell published Labor’s Role in Modern Society, his 190-page treatise on his political party and Australian politics.

In it, he described exactly what we see happening today.

This will not be an attempt to cast Calwell as some sort of heroic prophet. The former immigration minister and leader of the Labor party, known as the architect of Australia’s postwar immigration framework, was racist. He harboured racist views against Asians and other people of colour, tried to extend the White Australia policy for as long as he could and, even after politics, continued to rage against non-European immigration and people.

If there was one thing Calwell did understand intimately, it was structural power and the politics that dictated it. He wrote of the Labor Party as being a “duality”:”

“It is a political party in the accepted meaning of the term; but, at the same time, whether in power or out of power, it is a mass movement. It is always a propagandist movement seeking to change society in accordance with its policy. This gives the Labor Party a continuity which no other party possesses, a continuity of purpose which persists whether it is in power or not. For the conservative parties, possession of power is an end in itself, because conservative parties have never thought it part of their duty to attempt to change society fundamentally.”

Of Robert Menzies, who he had observed from his entry into politics, Calwell wrote” “Menzies was enough of a realist to be a socialist when necessary”.

“Within the [Menzies] government ranks, there are permanent tensions between the ‘true blue Liberals’ and what we might call the ‘paternalists’ of whom Sir Robert Menzies himself has been the most outstanding; between those two who believe as a matter of faith in the efficacy of unrestricted competition and those who know that their political survival depends upon the maintenance and even further extension of the welfare state.

“After the disaster at the polls in 1961, there were those who called upon the government for ‘a return to Liberal principles’, meaning presumably, the principles of the Menzies manifestoes of 1946 and 1949. Sir Robert Menzies, of course, rejected this advice because he was astute enough to realise that to accept it would be political-suicide for him and political disaster for his brain-child. However, the true conservatives are strong enough to prevent his complete surrender to rationality, with the result that Australia’s progress has been sacrificed on the alter of the long-dead god – the mummified god – of laissez-faire capitalism.”

Now, in 2025, we have witnessed the inevitable endpoints of both of the major political parties’ compromises.

Labor, in seeking to be the “natural party of government” as Anthony Albanese likes to say, has sacrificed its duality. The political party is separate from the movement that underpinned it.

How else to explain political Labor’s refusal to adopt its own members’ platform, and its adherence to established Liberal Party positions on welfare, climate, the economy and the United States?

In winning power, those still scarred from the Rudd-Gillard years have decided that the way to prevent any sort of repeat is to shun any difficult reform that receives pushback from established powerful interests. The only hint of bravery from this modern Labor political party has been in last parliament’s industrial relations reform, where suddenly “bipartisan support” from its supposed ideological enemies was not necessary or required, and pushback from business and neo-liberals was faced head on.

But, having tasted long-term power, this Labor Party now seems to want to hold it for power’s sake, no longer guided by the principles of changing society fundamentally but possession of power as an end to itself.

And from the Liberals, once sensible enough to recognise when socialist policies were necessary for political survival and when the conservatives needed to be ignored, we see the result of the more recent coddling of the conservatives’ tantrums. The tail not only wags the dog, it has consumed it completely, becoming a self-defeating ouroboros.

To understand the end, it is often helpful to go back to the beginning.

We have reached the end of the political year with Labor pushing forward environmental protection laws that benefit the mining industry, refusing to implement gambling ad reforms but banning teenagers from social media, sacking scientists, cosying up to authoritarian babymen, actively harming the unemployed, tightening spending on public health while throwing money at uncertain defence contracts, criticising and condemning protesters against genocide, while treating white supremacist marches, sympathetically. And the Liberals?

The best Sussan Ley’s team had is a gloat about how many interviews Ley has done denying her position is in jeopardy, as if the walking dead don’t yap.

The only question now, is where does this evolution end?