Beyond Belief
What future for Labor?
In Beyond Belief, John Button looks at what has gone wrong with the Labor Party. What has happened to the faith of the True Believers and why is the ALP so bad at recruiting new members? He offers a tough-minded analysis of what went wrong in the last election and asks why the Labor Party has turned its back on its destiny as a party of reform.
Here is a very cool account of the factions which seem to stand for nothing but their own power bases, and the unions who both give and get little from the ALP. In a withering analysis, John Button looks at the quality of Labor members and the short-sightedness of a party turning its back on ideas. This is an essay by a man who still believes in Chifley's light on the hill but who thinks the only hope lies with New Believers.
Correspondence discussing Quarterly Essay 6, Beyond Belief:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Button was a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments from 1983 until his retirement in 1993. As industry and commerce minister, he was regarded as the principal architect of modernised Australian industry. Before his death in 2008, Button wrote numerous articles and books, including Flying the Kite, On the Loose and As It Happened. In 2002, his Quarterly Essay, Beyond Belief – What Future for Labor? won the 2003 Alfred Deakin prize at the Victorian premier’s literary awards. The John Button Prize for non-fiction writing about politics and public policy was created in his memory.
READ AN EXTRACT
Beyond Belief represents one of the coolest and most disheartening accounts of a great political party this country has seen. This is the Australian Labor Party seen from the perspective of an elder statesman who has an absolute belief ... in the moral superiority of the Labor cause but who seriously doubts whether the ALP will ever achieve government again and who distinctly implies that in its present state it is not fit for it.
He is one of the most senior and experienced Labor figures to contribute to the contentious issue of how to reform the Labor party, and his offering is the most radical so far.
John Button has thrown a grenade into the mix.
Australia missed an opportunity when John Button never got to be prime minister.
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