The Labor paradox: Too progressive, not progressive enough

Labor governments face criticism from both sides, but progress requires compromise, consensus and accepting that not every change will suit everyone, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

IN MY 20 YEARS involved in Labor Party politics, I have never seen so much negativity and critique of the Labor Party as I see in the public sphere today.

This discontent, this wave of grievance, unsurprisingly batters Australia’s Labor governments from the Right, particularly the Far-Right, which is basically all of the Right these days.

But sadly, it also comes from the Left, amongst progressives who want constant and unrelenting change, but also refuse to acknowledge the complex context in which this change must be achieved. At the same time, these progressives – even the same people demanding more change – oppose change that they personally do not value.

The result is that Labor governments are wedged into a “never progressive enough, but also too progressive” bind where they are simultaneously targeted by grievances from the Left – including from within the party – and grievances from the Right. In this environment, the actual change they do achieve is criticised no matter what they do.

For the sake of simplicity, while acknowledging no one person perfectly fits either stereotype, there are two types of progressives at loggerheads over how Labor governments address the structural problems plaguing the nation to deliver a more equal and better quality of life for everyone (or at least as many people as possible).

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Again, for simplicity, I will use the issue of housing as a major structural problem which different levels of Labor governments are trying to address in various ways. Housing can also be considered an analogy for other policy areas.

The first kind of progressive is the kind I am. I cannot separate this progressivism from my decades in the Labor Party, where I have experienced winning and losing government and winning and losing policy outcomes because of it. This journey has made me – unashamedly – laser-focused on political consensus. That is, winning government and staying there.

Because, ultimately, without being in government, Labor can achieve very little and instead, we watch Labor policies being destroyed and inequality worsen.

The need for political consensus beyond a single term has a clear influence on how Labor governs. When you acknowledge this, you inevitably orient your activism in this direction. You do what you can to support the Labor Government in bringing about progressive reforms while also working to ensure Labor maintains broad, mainstream political support, which is needed to form and hold power.

Through this orientation, you are invariably going to accept that some actions and policies the Government adopts will not serve your every want and wish. Rather, they will be serving diverse and broad constituencies which sometimes do not include you.

Let’s use housing policies as an example. As a progressive, I can see that one of the biggest problems of wealth inequality is housing affordability. Even though I thought housing was expensive when my husband and I bought our house in 2013, since then, housing has become far more unaffordable, even in my state of South Australia.

Clearly, to address housing affordability in Australia, we need more housing built as quickly and affordably as possible. So, what does that mean for a progressive like me who already owns my own home? It means my local community is going to change.

It means the Government – whether in the council jurisdiction, at the state level and sometimes even at the federal level – will be approving housing developments in my suburb and beyond that involve more urban infill, more subdivision, more smaller houses, more apartment buildings, and often apartment buildings with more levels than our local community has ever had before.

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Housing will be built where once there was no housing at all. The scenery of Australia will change to accommodate more people.

As someone who recognises that this change is needed, I consider that Labor governments are serving wider goals of the electorate – housing affordability – in approving development that makes my suburb denser and more crowded, even when a development is built that I personally do not much like.

I also recognise that local businesses will be more successful in a growing community and that their success is good for me, too. I want my local café to be busy so it can thrive and if that means lining up for a coffee, this is progress to me.

In a nutshell, I have accepted that being a progressive means accepting macro changes, even if the micro pieces of change that contribute to these wider goals do not perfectly serve me. This is a compromise that I will happily make because I can see the big picture – the context – that Labor is working in.

Now we get to the other kind of progressives. In this housing analogy, they are the ones who join a local protest group against a housing development in their suburb because they do not like six-storey apartment buildings. They complain they might be able to see them from their quarter-acre block. They oppose buildings of this size being built anywhere – even main roads – because these structures change what the suburb looks like.

They oppose trees being cut down to make way for this development, because every tree is sacred, even when the developer is required to plant two trees for every tree that is removed. They also complain that the roads will be busier if more people live in the suburb and that their amenities will be stretched, which they say hurts their way of life.

They want things the way they were when they moved into the suburb, ten, 20, 30, even 40 years ago, and anything that looks different to that is an affront that they will automatically oppose and criticise Labor for approving.

There is something particularly noteworthy about the arguments these kinds of progressives make against housing development, and the way they weaponise their opposition against the Labor government. For approving new housing, Labor is accused of being pro-development, and sometimes, as corruptly in bed with developers.

The Labor Party is also accused by these progressives of being pro-capitalism because Labor politicians praise new developments as good for local businesses, as if being good for the economy is a failing of a government and not a strength. Sometimes, these progressives take this “Labor is pro-capitalism” mantra even further and say that the Labor Party is neoliberal and thus on the side of capitalists and not the public.

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Let’s go back to why Labor approved the housing development. Houses are unaffordable and many people, particularly young people, are desperate to buy their own homes, but are priced out of the market. Apartments are not their first choice of where they want to live; however, they are the most affordable option. The taller the development, the cheaper the apartments will be and the more people who will enter the market.

And yes, it is a housing market, and developers do make money building housing, and local businesses are trying to make a profit, because we live in a country that is a capitalist society.

If this capitalist system is not functioning effectively, people lose their livelihoods. Capitalism is the system Labor governs in and until someone successfully mounts a revolution against this system (and indeed suggests an alternative that is more than a theoretical idea on an undergraduate napkin), this is the system in which Labor has to form political consensus and serve the interests of as many of the public as they possibly can.

Parties of government must care about the economy, about livelihoods, about workers remaining in work, even if some progressives do not.

The outcome of these opposing views of progressivism leads the latter type of progressives to accuse Labor progressives of “not being progressive enough”, or “not even progressive at all”, or even as “right wing” – a deeply offensive slur against people who spend their time and energy fighting for progress and against right-wing parties.

Ironically, the latter progressives are usually the last people you see actually doing the hard political work of knocking on doors, speaking to people who they don’t agree with, handing out materials at polling booths for eight hours and trying to convince voters to vote Labor. Instead, all their time and energy is spent critiquing Labor for not being good enough, while constantly showing that nothing Labor does will ever be good enough for them.

At the same time, they oppose any change they are inconvenienced by, refusing to recognise when it serves the broader public interest.

Yet, if progressives only want change within the narrow scope of their own personal interests, while ignoring the need for political consensus – and any change is not allowed to negatively impact them in any way, even when it serves wider progressive goals – then I would question if this even is a progressive position. Or rather, if it is selfish-minded, privileged-status-quo conservatism dressed up as progressivism.

To be truly progressive, you actually need to work to make change happen. That work is hard, requires compromise, is dependent on solidarity and requires a collective effort to build consensus. That work is made infinitely harder when people who claim to be progressive are opposing it.