John Singleton with Bob HowardRip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 149-51, under the heading “Labor Party”.

The objective of the Australian Labor Party, stated right at the beginning of their platform, reads as follows:

1. OBJECTIVE: The democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange — to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in those fields — in accordance with the principles of action, methods and progressive reforms set out in the platform.

Section V on Economic Planning mentions the aim to establish a Department of Economic Planning; the need to appropriately empower the Australian Government to make laws with respect to prices, incomes and interest rates; the objective “to establish or extend public enterprise, where appropriate, by nationalisation, particularly in the fields of banking, consumer finance, insurance, marketing, housing, stevedoring, transport and in areas of anti-social monopoly” [our italics]; the aim to optimise the use of resources by the use of “tariffs, import controls, subsidies and/or other economic instruments”; and so on.

Elsewhere the platform mentions such aims as the provision of a “universal, free [?], compulsory, secular system of education open to all citizens”; the achievement of “full ownership and control of coal, oil, natural gas, uranium and all other fuel and energy resources …” by the government; “The responsibility … for instituting a programme of community development in the restructuring of old cities and the building of new cities”; a system of “comprehensive social, economic, and environmental planning, including the integrated planning of human settlements and comprehensive planning for the use of land, water and other natural resources” to eliminate environmental problems; a free national health service; the provision of tourist, sport, physical fitness, community recreation and youth facilities; a vast system of social security benefits; “the right to full employment, real economic justice; freedom and security; the right to work in just and favourable conditions [who determines what is ‘just’ and ‘favourable’?] and freedom to choose employment”; the right to “a standard of living … commensurate with modern concepts and national prosperity”; constitutional changes to, among other things, “grant general powers to the Australian Parliament to pass laws relating to such matters as registration of industrial organisations and the rights and liabilities of such organisations and their officers and members, industrial safety, training and retraining of manpower, severance pay and other post-employment obligations, employee participation in management and workers’ compensation …”; the provision of fertilizer subsidies (??); provision of “a safe, efficient and modern transport system, embracing all forms of transport (including pipelines); re-establishment of the Inter-State Commission “to co-ordinate all types of interstate transport in Australia including rail, road, air, water and pipelines, and to regulate conditions of carriage”; defence forces “properly equipped with the best and most up-to-date weapons”; “the amalgamation of the legal profession” (?); encouragement and support for the arts, and censorship laws that allow adults to read, hear and view what they wish in private or public, but at the same time, the establishment of a statutory authority to administer television and radio, the issue and renewal of licenses “on a variable basis”, and a continuing study of all radio and television stations to be made and “questions of an adequate quality and range of programming, determinations of possible unfulfilled needs, and the effects upon society of present forms of programming “to be investigated”.

One might as well ask what’s going to be left for private individuals to do when a Labor government has everything it wants?

In the light of the philosophy expressed in this book, it is easy to see the profound differences of opinion that exist between Libertarianism and the Labor Party. The tyranny of non-specific rules and laws is particularly relevant here. What, precisely, do such terms as “exploitation”, “anti-social”, “community development”, “real economic justice”, “just and favourable conditions”, “modern concepts and national prosperity”, “post-employment obligations”, “employee participation”, “a variable basis”, and “adequate quality and range” mean? A Labor government elected on a platform containing such non-specific terms can and will claim a mandate for virtually anything. Every one of those terms can be defined at will to cover a vast range of possibilities. The question always is: who decides, by what criteria, and by what right? The entire Labor platform is riddled with these statements. They all sound very nice, but when you try to put meaning to them they get to be horrifying in their possibilities.

Where the platform is specific, it is also riddled with straight-out errors and contradictions. What, for example, does a right to full employment mean? How does that stack up against the fundamental individual rights of employers? What about the rights to property and voluntary trade? Do employers have fewer, equal or more rights than employees? What does that imply? Do rich people have fewer, equal, or more rights than poor people? What does this imply? If everyone has the “right” to free education, who pays for it, and what about their rights?

These sorts of questions can be asked on almost every line. Nowhere in the entire Labor platform is there evidence of the consistent application of principles, or of an appreciation of fundamental economic principles. Contrary to popular belief, economic production doesn’t just happen regardless of social, political or economic circumstances, nor has the government a bottomless pit from which to fund its programmes; and nor can “public” money be regarded as being neutral — of having an existence free of any other considerations. “Public” money is stolen money, and its expenditure is not justified by the “public good” of the programme under consideration. Thus, the specifics — where they can be determined — of the Labor platform are stacked with errors and contradictions.

Much of the support for the Labor Party comes from those who approve of the good intentions of most of its aims, but even on the Left, there is awareness of what those well-intentioned efforts will achieve (?) in practice. Bruce McFarlane, writing in p. 118 of the book, The Australian New Left (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1970), has written, “[The New Left] holds that the infallible road to totalitarianism is Fabian tinkering and A.L.P.-type ‘socialism-by-stealth’ which excluded the mass of the people from control.”

Most Labor supporters have genuine humanitarian intentions. In certain areas, such as civil liberties and victimless “crimes”, Labor is far superior to the Liberal/N.C. Parties. The Left in general is very accurate in their analysis of the corporate State and modern power structures. But, as has been said before, by opting for a programme of A.L.P.-type socialism in place of Liberal/N.C.P. corporate capitalism they are merely substituting one evil for another.

A free voluntary society with the power of the State reduced to an absolute minimum will achieve all the humanitarian ideals of the Labor Party, without killing the goose before it gets to lay even one more egg. “Socialist” stagnation such as that enjoyed in Great Britain is what the Labor Party promises, and that’s no way to solve anything.