justgoing back to a previous comment re mass membership of factions:

TheALP is a VERY broad church. And the official forums of the ALP do not exactly allow for free and open debate of progressive policy and causes. In fact, I remember years ago being hounded by Trotksyists who bemoaned my 'illusions' in the ALP: a party they saw as a "prison for the Left". Sadly, though, unless socialists in the ALP are willing to create their own forums for debate, discussion, mobilisation - they will be swamped by the imperatives of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party - which is to come down hard on any discussion that might be controversial. Labor for Refugees would never have come into being if not for the determination of some to creation a forum - in fact a movement - outside of official Party channels.

With factions - if the Left cannot build the forums for robust internal debate, and promotion of socialist ideas - no-one will - and socialists will ultimately find the ALP a suffocating environment. Part of this process is forming dicussion forums - such as particpatory online journals, egroups, public meetings - and partly this is about building a movement within the ALP to campaign for socialism - that is organised to take the campaign into the branches and unions - and fight to change the policy direction of the ALP. This process must come 'from below' - as the Parliamentary leadership is too concerned with the day to day reactions of the media - and this short termism leads to opportunism.

Since factions are the real force behind decision-making in the ALP - is also stands to reason that internal democratic processes and greater participation - would lead to a broader democratisation of the ALP. I know that unless I can influence SL leaders through faction decision-making processes - I have no hope of making a difference at a branch level. Branch members are treated with contempt - and only find a voice when they collectively organise - and this ultimately means becoming involved in a faction.

Tristan

Tell me, Corin - what's the 'rampant Left' doing that you find so offensive and threatening? Is it just because you think the Right, being bereft of values of its own, might be more open to schemes for education vouchers and cutting the minimum wage? But really - what precisely are the policy prescriptions of the Left that you have a problem with - and who is making these prescriptions?

Tristan

Tristan, simple - I prefer incentives to gifts - incentives in the long run promote better opportunities. The Left are often believers in passive welfare: indeed the idea of the helpless working class (needing a constant state intervention of help) is a fundamental difference between us. I believe in stragetgic intervention and the so called 'ladder of opportunity'. I'd suggest that that work incentives are better than passive welfare as an example. That choice in education is a right, able to be delivered to more people by differential payment, and that these policies will define Labour in the 21st Century. That HECS has been the best policy for getting working class kids into Uni: see 30% of kids going as opposed to 15% before it. This can only extended further by continuing HECS and expanding it. I welcome Emerson's 'learn or earn' views but think that the best method of delivery is actually using carrots like tax credits and wage restraint as opposed to sticks like time limiting social security.

A suppressed AWB-type report involving botched ppp's, then an appallingly corrupt water deal draw a plea from the "Age's" doyen pol-economy columnist Kenneth Davidson, for the Bracks monstrosity to finally put the national ALP and the people of Australia ahead of its own secret misconceived agendas.
Meanwhile, Mike Carlton in the SMH bewails on-going anti- Muslim McCarthyism, portraying ancient warhorse Malcom Fraser as again being forced to carry his bat against the bogons, for the underdogs. Meanwhile, the likes of Rudd, who SHOULD be leading the charge for human rights, instead indulges in a "me too race to the bottom" featuring the misrepresenting and scapegoating of a certain clumsy local Muslim leader.
Meanwhile, the pervasive neolib myth of "passive" welfare is trotted out yet again, this time by that ghost, Emerson.
People like you, Corin, always ignore the fact that the unemployed do not ASK to be unemployed. They are forced to this state by neoliberalism. Like Aborigines, they are entitled to a compensatory factor as far as I am concerned, on top of the miserable subsistence component, for the disruption caused to their lives by greedy capitalism and its weak, corrupt politician toadies. The alliance continues to SABOTAGE all attempts at reconstituting the level playing field so essential in market theory, in favour of cozy monopolies and an eventual corporate fascist style state.
Corin, please read today's "Age", concerning privatised bottled water. Then, ask yourself who should be paying for what and why this NOT so, in a supposedly Labor state. Then go and find out about Gunns, Cubbie Creek in QLD and think about the PPP infrastructure failures.
I know the press and media are red hot anti opposition of any kind and are attacking public information Media. Time is running out. But, if ALP leaders continue negotiating away their principles for a fitful illusion of ephemeral power and prestige, or sly backhanders, the real battle is already lost.
All you going to get is more people like Bracks and Lennon following the likes of Howard and Murdoch into their Faustian sewer, without forgrounding a "principles first" aproach.