The government has passed a lot of legislation that I regard as positive. But I also think the quality of reforms has been mixed. It’s not just the number of bills, but what they do for the working class — that’s the important test for me.

On that front, it’s been a mixed bag. I know the union movement has welcomed Labor’s industrial relations reforms, especially the legalization of multiemployer bargaining and new protections for  gig-economy workers. But there is still much more Labor could have done to help people struggling on social security payments. And like many ALP members, I was concerned by the government’s decision to support Liberal Party tax cuts and the AUKUS military pact with the United States.

I’m saying that Labor should have gone back to its values — that is, helping those who need help during the cost-of-living crisis. Of course, Labor will always do more for the working class than the Coalition — but the party should set itself a higher standard. At the very least, that standard should mean helping working-class people more than it has this term.

I must say, I always felt very comfortable as an ALP senator when Bill Shorten was the opposition leader, which is bizarre given the fights and differences I had with him and other members of the Labor Right faction over many years. That’s because Bill took a very good progressive agenda to the 2019 election, including a promise to abolish tax breaks for property speculators, like negative-gearing and capital-gains tax concessions. It was always the Left of the party that championed these issues — which is bizarre because now, although we have a Labor Left PM, Anthony Albanese has taken a very different approach.

It’s true that Bill and Albo took different policies to the electorate, but they also campaigned under different circumstances. In 2022, Australians had been through eleven years of Liberal-National party government and the conservative PM, Scott Morrison, was unpopular.

That gave Labor a big opportunity to challenge the idea that free markets deliver better outcomes for working people than governments can. We were in a good position to intervene more. I’m not saying Labor hasn’t in some areas, but I think that, in its first term, Labor should have prioritized its commitment to working-class people over defending Morrison’s tax cuts and AUKUS.

It started to unravel when conservative prime minister Robert Menzies decided to push up private home ownership by selling public housing. That was a strategy to turn working-class people into mini-capitalists. Since then, governments have increasingly viewed housing in terms of profits and investments rather than as a human right.

That’s shifted attention away from policies that prioritize affordable, stable, and high-quality homes for working-class people. So I’m arguing that there is a different way to do housing that isn’t anchored in what’s best for the market and property speculators. That’s the kind of fundamental debate that Labor should be having.

Partly it’s about tax reform. I mean, most economists understand that capital-gains tax concessions and negative gearing drive housing prices up, right? But that’s off the table for both major parties at the moment. Even Labor politicians aren’t interested in debating housing as a human right.

This has helped a kind of racist argument creep into the debate, namely, the idea that immigration drives up housing prices. I think it’s wrong to capitulate to the argument that reducing migration should be the focus of the housing policy debate. I migrated here, and immigration has been a positive economic and social driver in this country.

Now, I don’t think Labor’s going to go to the next election saying it’s going to change negative gearing. But negative gearing does need to be dealt with in the longer term, because it mainly benefits wealthy speculators. And I hope that the ALP goes to the election with a robust policy that formalizes housing as a human right.

There are people who can pay millions of dollars for a house. But for most young Australians, that’s never going to be an option. To address that, Labor needs long-term policies.

One thing I want to see is a new housing commission that sits under the infrastructure portfolio, instead of social services and treasury. That agency would plan and build more public and community housing projects. It wouldn’t kill the private housing market, but it will give families a far better life than the status quo.

On the contrary, I think that challenging the status quo would be a vote winner. It’s not just young people who are worried about housing; it’s a lot of parents and relatives watching their kids struggle. That’s why the “Everybody’s Home” inquiry that I cochaired with Professor Nicole Gurran is calling for 750,000 new public and community-owned homes. We want Labor to take that up. What’s the point of having a balanced budget if people in the community can’t get a roof over their heads?

Obviously, when working-class people are struggling financially, they don’t always turn to the Left for answers. They can instead turn to the Right and people like Trump. That’s a real problem in the United States, and it’s a growing problem here that will persist unless progressives come up with an overarching economic and social platform that gives Australians hope. I don’t just mean making promises on Election Night and then capitulating to Rupert Murdoch the next day. How about actually delivering for working-class people?

The lesson Labor should draw from the United States is that without an overarching progressive platform, it’s going to have a problem. I mean, I can’t see the Liberals winning the 2025 election — but stranger things have happened. The best way to stop Peter Dutton is to have an agenda that talks to the people [who are struggling].

Specifically, the government could invest in modular housing, which is becoming more and more popular in North America and Europe. A new industry like that would deliver environmentally sustainable and affordable housing. It could also create jobs in areas where they’re disappearing like parts of northern Tasmania and the Hunter Valley. That’s a practical example.

I think it’s almost unrecognizable. I remember marching in Sydney with Tom Uren and thousands of Labor members at Palm Sunday peace marches. I remember the Left factional leadership in the Hawke government publicly and strongly opposing plans for MX missile testing in Australia. They forced Bob Hawke to back down. That contrasts with the Left’s position on AUKUS, which has not been robust enough. 

How the hell could you adopt the AUKUS policy without a wide-ranging debate in the party? I don’t mean some manipulated national-conference policy outcome, but genuine debate within the ALP about the implications of preparing for war with our biggest trading partner. That’s got me beat. I can’t believe that I’m more on the side of Paul Keating, Gareth Evans, Bob Carr — who are prominent members of the Right faction — than some of my comrades that I used to join at peace marches. And to be accused of being “an appeaser” by a government minister who used to march with me on Palm Sunday is just bizarre.

I’ve always thought that Labor governments can be more adventurous when they deliver on basic things like health, education, and housing. But more people are asking why we’re spending AU$360 billion on AUKUS when their kids can’t afford a house.

Certainly there have been significant changes in the leadership. But I don’t see it happening in local ALP branches. Party members I talk to don’t understand why we’re subsidizing overseas shipbuilding industries and other parts of the US and UK military-industrial complexes. I haven’t heard any argument of substance as to why we need to do that.

But the arguments against that decision go back some time. In fact, former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser wrote a book not long before he died called Dangerous Allies. It partly preempts the AUKUS debate by considering what would happen if Australia and the United States adopted a war footing against China. Basically Fraser argues that America and Australia can’t win that conflict, and that the US would ultimately retreat to its own borders. That would leave Australia as a defeated ally — that is, bare-assed in the Asia Pacific.

How can it be defensive when we’re buying nuclear-powered attack-class submarines? We should stop pretending these aren’t offensive weapons against China. And it’s not just politicians who are saying so — experts have questioned AUKUS and proposed alternatives. Sam Roggeveen, for example, has put forward a way of dealing with China called the Echidna Strategy. Essentially Rogerveen argues that Australia doesn’t need to have its navy off the Chinese coast. He says we should focus on making it untenable for a country like China to reach Australia.

Meanwhile everything explaining why the government has gone down the road of AUKUS beggars belief. Twenty years ago, the Labor Left faction would not have agreed to AUKUS — there would have been a brawl in the Federal Caucus.

But what did we get? We got a cabinet decision supporting one of the biggest economic and military decisions of any government in recent memory. And they took it just twenty-four hours after receiving a report outlining AUKUS from then PM Scott Morrison. That doesn’t gel with me.

Surely people should be asking themselves: Do we want to continue our trade relationship with China or pursue a deeper military relationship with the United States, which is about military adventurism? Which one is in our interest? Certainly not the latter.

AUKUS makes the Hawke-era debate over the MX missile tests look like a pimple on the bum. And yet we just capitulated to a plan — and I use the word “plan” in inverted commas here — developed by Morrison, the worst PM ever. Why?

Making unilateral decisions at the cabinet level without taking the pulse of the membership is a recipe for problems at the next election, especially when it comes to getting activists out campaigning. It’s a problem internally that we’ve got this supine approach from caucus members on this issue. I don’t even think there has been a decent cabinet debate over AUKUS.

Now, I have no doubt that when Albo calls the election, people will put their shoulder to the wheel to ensure that Peter Dutton doesn’t become the next prime minister. But there still needs to be a discussion between the Federal Caucus and rank-and-file party members about what Labor will deliver in its second term. The answer to that rests in strong progressive health, education, and housing policies — you know, the basic measures that give people a decent life.

During that conversation, many people will be asking the government for its reasoning on AUKUS, specifically why Australia is spending all this money. I think that a genuine dialogue along those lines will make it hard to dismiss opponents of AUKUS as old-fashioned and not accepting of the fact that things have changed in the Asia Pacific. Because that’s just rhetoric, not reasoning.

Labor’s dominant Right faction has always a neoliberal agenda. But in the past, there was a strong Labor Left voice counterbalancing it. Part of the government’s problem is that there isn’t a strong Labor Left voice in Canberra. From my perspective, the parliamentary left is supine and hasn’t done what it’s expected to do — which is to debate and influence policy. And that’s surprising given Albo, like me, is a member of the Left.

What makes the difference is having values and principles that guide you. In my case, I always wanted to be a voice for working-class people and unions. Sure, politicians must be pragmatic — but if you violate your basic principles, then what’s the point?