MARK RILEY: Passion lacking at Labor’s ‘performative’ conferences

Labor Party national conferences are not what they used to be.

In many ways, that is not a bad thing.

Delegates are no longer exposed to union leaders holding court around the pool in their budgie smugglers, as Bob Hawke famously did at Terrigal in 1975.

Nor are foreign ministers summoned to the prime ministerial suite to be confronted by a leader reclining in an armchair completely starkers while being briefed on factional proceedings.

That was Bob Hawke again at the 1988 conference at Hobart’s West Point Casino. The unfortunate minister was Bill Hayden.

Those days are long gone.

The modern Labor Party is much more corporate.

And clothed.

But a lot of the passion has also gone.

Many of the meetings that preceded this 50th Federal conference sit proudly within party folklore for their blood-stained brawls over Labor’s defining principles on key issues such as conscription, tariffs, privatisation, uranium mining, dismantling the White Australia policy and more recently asylum boat turn-backs, same-sex marriage and AUKUS.

But this conference is different. Very different.

It is more choreographed and stage-managed than any of the 49 before it.

The outcomes on most, if not all, policy debates have been predetermined through months of discussions between the party’s factional heavyweights.

The passion and conviction of many on the floor is real, but the voting is merely performative.

And the prospect of at least one fair dinkum barney erupting over proposals to change the Australian flag was short-lived.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union made headlines when its pre-conference statement of principles included the long-held view that the Union Jack should be replaced with some sort of recognition of Australia’s Indigenous heritage.

That sparked newspaper headlines suggesting an unbridled blue over the flag was about to shatter the convention’s carefully curated kumbaya countenance.

But union officials told 7NEWS they had never intended to raise the issue as an amendment to the party platform, as had been reported, or even debate it at all.

They had simply included it in the union’s “statement of principles”, just as they had done before previous conferences.

Anthony Albanese was no doubt relieved.

He wants this conference to showcase what he regards as Labor’s uncommon unity and stability in a time of bitter political division — certainty in the face of global uncertainty.

Albanese’s plan is to elevate Labor as a party of stability, standing in stark contrast to the internal chaos of the Coalition since the last election and One Nation’s effective but angry brand of disruptive dissent.

And in doing that, he is trying to appropriate the defining word of our current politics and convert it to his party’s advantage.

That word is “change”.

Angus Taylor is now constantly chanting the Tony Abbott-era refrain that Australians “must change this rotten Government”.

And One Nation is promising to change not just the Government but the entire make-up, complexion and character of the country.

But Albanese wants to convince voters they already have an effective agent of change: him.

The title of his curtain-raising speech was Delivering Real Change.

In it, he rattled through a list of reforms he says are already changing Australians’ lives for the better: wage rises, tax cuts, bulk-billing clinics, fee-free TAFE, power bill relief, first home buyers support and better education.

He has also introduced other changes, like those to negative gearing, capital gains taxes and trusts, that he expressly promised he wouldn’t do.

He argues that they, too, were necessary reforms responding to unexpectedly sharp changes in circumstances.

Albanese often reminds the Labor caucus that governments aren’t there to maintain the status quo.

They have to constantly change to stay ahead of the increasing demands of a fast-evolving world.

If they don’t, they will be changed from a government to an opposition.

Voters will see to that.

And if that happens, the 51st Federal conference will be far from a Labor love-in.

Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor