Talk:Australian Labor Party/Archive 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.


Contents

Semi-protection of page

Seems there has been quite a bit of vandalism of the page lately. Perhaps semi-protection is warranted. How does one going about getting the admins to apply it? Alans1977 20:34, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Normally at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. However, this article doesn't warrant protection currently. If the vandalism increases in frequency, then maybe.--cj | talk 05:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Alans1977 05:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Policy & National Conference

The current National Platform was adopted by the 43rd National Conference in January 2004.

This is out of date - should this now read "44th" and "April 2007"? --B.d.mills 11:58, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

reference to Liberal/National parties

I have just made the following change:

It is the only party to have been in continuous operation since Federation, and competes with the centre-right Liberal/National coalition.

to

It is the only party to have been in continuous operation since Federation, and competes with the centre-right Liberal and National for political office, particularly at the federal and state level.

I have made this changes to reflect the fact that the party runs for office at all three levels of Government, although focus is obviously more on the State and Federal level, with only a few LGAs being political. Also the Liberals and Nationals are traditionally in coalition at the federal level, but that is not necessarily the case at the Sate and Local government level, eg. Victoria and South Australia. I would of course be very open to discussion if this change is in any way objectionable. Cheers, WikiTownsvillian 04:26, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Communism

I told the admins on the request page that the ALP and Lib pages should be protected for the upcoming elections like Rudd and Howard have got, but noooo, they wouldn't listen would they. Just for a point of clarification, communism is seriously laughable. If they were a communist party, Whitlam wouldn't have led them to the 1972 election win and destroyed the Democratic Labor Party vote. Since then, the ALP has moved more and more to the economic right. And even an edit attempt at "extreme communism"! Rusted on Liberals... Timeshift 05:03, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Edit required

The admin who locked the page hasn't responded to my message left hours ago, so if another mod reads this can they please disambiguate Democratic Labor Party to Democratic Labor Party. TIA. Timeshift 09:54, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm just doing it now. I had no idea that you weren't an admin, though - is there any reason for this? I'd be happy to nominate you if you're willing. Rebecca 10:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to mix business and pleasure. Thanks anyway, that's quite the compliment :-) Timeshift 10:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Alp redirects here

Several pages referring to Alp (singular mountain in central europe) end up being redirected here. Can the links from those pages be changed to point to Alps? DavidRF 14:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

No Longer Centre Left

It has been a very long time since the Labor Party could be described as Centre Left, or in fact leftist at all. The policies of the Hawke/Keating Governments were so far right that the Liberal party was forced to take extreme stances to look any different and things have not changed. The Labor Party would now be accurately described as a Centre Right party. Passol42 00:14, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Economically, yes. But these days it's not a simple matter of left and right, as theres economic and social issues. Centre-left has information on it that relates to the ALP, and in relation to the Liberals they are centre-left as opposed to centre-right. The increasing centre-right economic policies are discussed in the article. This issue has been done to death. Timeshift 00:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Then it's time the description was removed from the article - it is contentious at best, inaccurate at worst 203.166.29.250 04:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
It takes more than one random anonymous IP to get something like that changed. Timeshift 04:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
The ALP supports collective organising, it supports trade unionism, it supports a welfare state, it supports public funding of public goods (health, education and so on). How that's 'far right' I'm really not sure - I didn't realise supporting Medicare entitled me to a brown shirt and a bad haircut...
If you're from the Libs, you'd probably sneer at the ALP for being socialist scum (and indeed, some libs do just this). If you're from the non-Labor left you'd probably fancy that the ALP is too far right (ah, the simplicity of life when you never have to deliver...). The ALP describes itself as Centre-Left, and the bagging it gets from all quarters puts it right about there, and its policy outlook is still Centre-Left. So in my opinion it should stay. Dibo T | C 05:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
At least some overseas news services describe Labor as centre-left (and Liberal as centre-right): http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/03/asia/AS-GEN-Climate-Change-World-View.php http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/12/05/2003339182 http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/08/ap3999595.html Peter Ballard 05:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
See. Again - this argument has been had many times, and has been done to death. ALP is best described centre-left followed by their ideology (social democracy) and the coalition is best described centre-right followed by their ideology (liberal conservatism/conservative liberalism), and where they happen to embrace non-traditional policies, it is mentioned within the article. That is the way they will stay until any mass consensus points otherwise. Timeshift 05:28, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Who likes games?

Who wants to play match the face? I've started adding names to the captions for

, if anyone else is familiar or is good at matching someone from historical Labor MP photos we have on here to those in the picture... that would be great :-) Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 1901-1903 was of some help, but limited. Timeshift 13:51, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Party Infoboxes

In an attempt to remove labels such as "centre left/right, liberal/social conservative/democracy" out of the intro but remain prominent, I noticed Labour Party (UK) and it has it all in the infobox... I tried adding "position = Centre-Left|" to Labor's infobox but it didn't add it... am I missing something? Timeshift 03:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Text

Does anyone else think the article needs a good re-write as it just doesn't flow well? And some of the POV/OR isn't all too good. I've made some changes. Timeshift 15:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Australian Labor?

Just because their logo doesnt say party it doesnt mean they've renamed themselves. Go to www.alp.org.au (note ALP) and note the title of the page - Australian Labor Party. I disagree with the page name change. Timeshift 14:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I've reverted.--cj | talk 15:12, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Labor/Labour

Why have the spelt it wrong? 82.3.18.24 22:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

See King O'Malley. Dibo T | C 23:01, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Andrew Fisher for GA

I've just nominated Andrew Fisher, 5th Prime Minister of Australia as a Good Article and would appreciate a few peer reviews. Also, are the rationales for the photos not good enough? Thanks for any comments/help provided. Timeshift 02:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Not Centre-Left

The ALP clearly does not fall in the category of a centre-left party. Someone tell me one policy of the ALP that is remotely left/socialist. The ALP is a centre party. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.92.97.111 (talk) 04:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Paul Keating... read... he's the best example of an economic right social left, almost libertarian. As for current policies, you aren't really silly enough to base an Australian party's ideology on their opposition policies are you? Timeshift 05:15, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't know how they could be classified as centre-left when Kevin Rudd proudly and consistently proclaims that he is an economic conservatist 211.28.131.166 10:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC) BenS
Read the ideology links in the infobox and not just the position. Read the links, and indeed the article, to understand how their philosophy changed from democratic socialism to social democracy to the third way. Rudd, like Hawke and Keating, are adherents to the third way. It's certainly nothing new. Timeshift 10:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Moderation of images

I find it terribly inconsistent to remove any of the non-free (post-Chifley) images when those at Labour Party (UK) such as George Brown, Hugh Gaitskell, and Michael Foot remain and seemingly without objection. And I won't even begin to compare the quality of the rationales used... Timeshift 16:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible that they just haven't got to the UK ones? Rebecca 00:27, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
One of those was uploaded January 2005. I wish one of mine got as good-a run as that. And my point isn't their deletion, as the ones I uploaded aren't deleted either. My point is that if their page can have a picture of all leaders, I don't see why we can't have a picture of all Prime Ministers. Timeshift 04:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as copyvio goes, that's no longer an issue for a single Labor Prime Minister picture anymore :-) Timeshift 07:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Collective/enterprise bargaining

What is the difference between the two or am I understanding from what i'm reading that they're more or less the same thing? Timeshift 05:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Collective bargaining is any form of bargaining between a group and an individual. In an industrial sense it is typically the collective of workers that the name refers to, and the other party in the bargaining process may be one or many employers.
Enterprise bargaining is a particular kind of collective bargaining between an employer and their workers. It contrasts with industry-wide bargaining which involves all the employers within an industry and may or may not involve pattern bargaining (where the same deal is sought separately in multiple deals across an industry in order to standardise conditions). Dibo T | C 07:08, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
So is it correct to say that Keating Labor introduced enterprise bargaining, or collective bargaining? Timeshift 07:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Enterprise bargaining - though in reality over award payments have been negotiated and given on an enterprise level over many years. The Brereton reforms simply created a framework to facilitate the process. Collective bargaining is what unions have always done as long as they've existed - worked together to try to get a better deal. Nobody in particular 'introduced' that. Dibo T | C 03:39, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protection

Any reason this page still has it as the Liberal page doesn't? Timeshift 08:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It's be protected for almost 3 months now, I think it's a good time to remove it (even during an election as minor vandalism isn't reason for protection) from this article and *maybe* WorkChoices. --TheSeer (TalkˑContribs) 21:47, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

ALP and Coalition ideology

Do people think it's more precise to classify the ALP as social democratic, rather than center-left. By the same token do people think it's more precise to classify the Coalition as neoliberal, rather than center-right. If anyone has any input into this please see the discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Australian_federal_election%2C_2007#Description_of_ALP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alans1977 (talk • contribs) 21:58, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

They are classed as both which is what they are. Also note the same classifications at Labour Party (UK). Timeshift 22:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Consistency of Am/Br-En

Shouldn't "labor/labour" be spelled consistently throughout the article, in accordance with Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English? The second sentence is different from the first sentence and the title, etc. Edit: I see the "etymology" section, but the article still needs to be consistent. Unimaginative Username (talk) 02:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There's the worldwide "labour" movement, and the Australian "Labor" Party, which until 1911 spelled its name "Labour". It has caused confusion (and, dare I say it, frustration) previously, but I think the spelling in this article is correct at the moment. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:07, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
For a bit more fun and confusion, the ALP use the spelling "Labor" to refer to themselves and "labour" to refer to the concept of "work/workers". See the first paragraph of this policy statement for an example. Manning (talk) 02:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

New NT Chief Minister

I should say sorry for reverting those edits that included info on the new Chief Minister. I hadn't heard the news and saw the edits by an unregistered user and just assumed it was vandalism! My mistake. I'll be a bit more careful in future. Sting_au Talk 06:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Never mind - we've all been guilty of being over-zealous at some time or another. Cheers Manning (talk) 09:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

whats wrong with a timeline?

It gives a clear and representative indication of the length of period the respective leaders have served. Just because a couple don't like it doesn't mean everyone else doesn't. I say it is worthwhile. Nomadtales (talk) 08:57, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I say it provides no useful/additional information in addition to the list of leaders already there. Timeshift (talk) 09:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Well if you disapprove to having two lists then we can always just go with one, in the form of a timeline. The Prime Minister of Australia page does this already. The timeline can be centred and text made bigger. Nomadtales (talk) 20:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Nope, we (me and the user who first reverted anyway) don't want the timeline. It provides nothing additional, except clutter. Timeshift (talk) 22:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I like it, but it's a bit of a mess at the top. Rather not.--RoryReloaded 09:23, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
That timeline is nothing but clutter--RoryReloaded 07:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Added to the see also of the leader list. Timeshift (talk) 15:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Reminder

That image reminder stopped me from putting 1 there. Why?--RoryReloaded 09:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

"All levels?"

What does the phrase "Labor now governs at all levels of parliamentary government in Australia simultaneously" mean, exactly? Labor doesn't run all the state governments, does it? --Jfruh (talk) 18:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

They do. All of the State Governments are under the ALP leadership.--RoryReloaded 19:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Good lord, you're right. New intro makes that much easier to follow, thanks! --Jfruh (talk) 20:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

So monstrous a travesty

I bought a copy of the book today. If anyone needs clarification on anything to do with Chris Watson, let me know and i'll see what I can find. It looks quite interesting, as did "Australian Prime Ministers" by Michelle Grattan, and it had quite a lot of historical photos too. Perhaps next time. Timeshift (talk) 06:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Politicial ideology - democratic socialism

Do not touch these. This isn't just about the current Labor Party, but about the party since 1891. Democratic socialism has always been their official position in the party's constitution, and regardless of whether or not they still practise it is irrelevant. Timeshift (talk) 00:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The article says it, but the caption is wrong

Andrew Fisher served three terms and the party name changed during his second term, the article says it somewhere, but you have to fish it out.Gregorydavid (talk) 05:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, where is the issue? It changed in 1912 as it says in every article. Where is the inconsistency? Timeshift (talk) 05:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
The issue is about as important as the missing 'u'. During the first term it was the Labour Party, not the Labor Party as the caption says.Gregorydavid (talk) 06:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Decline in membership

The article doesn't mention the decline in Labor Party membership, which shows an erosion of grass-roots support, and a heavier reliance on funding from corporations and unions to get things done.Lester 22:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that this page was the definitive source for anything and everything to do with the Labor Party. If you want to add it, do so in an NPOV, neutral, reliably sourced way. Timeshift (talk) 22:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi Timeshift. Just thought I'd mention it here before doing it. Regards, Lester 23:00, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh ok then :) Timeshift (talk) 23:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Is it really notable? I don't mind the inclusion (and likewise for other political parties...assuming they have the same "problem") but it should be more than just a throw away line, or a quick quote with a reference. Something in the context of "In modern times the party has suffered from declining membership....blah blah" with an RS about some of the root causes etc (IMO). Shot info (talk) 23:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. It does have a severe potential for WP:OR, so be careful about wording. Timeshift (talk) 23:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Labor is one of many parties facing the same problem, as people today are more cynical about the political process and even those who vote consistently one way are far less likely to join a party. The branch stacking going on (and the obvious decline in constitutional membership which made that possible) in the NSW Libs as documented on Four Corners last year, the hijacking of Greens branches in the Perth metro area by interest groups etc is evidence that similar problems affect other parties as well. All three are suffering from "mass party syndrome" which is documented in one of my political science textbooks - as parties move to compete in the modern era they become increasingly professionalised and grassroots support matters less (Politics One by Ward I. and Stewart R.G. (2006)) I think it belongs in Politics of Australia rather than a specific article about one party, although it can be noted in general terms in this article that Labor membership has declined over the years. Orderinchaos 08:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
That was very well said, Orderinchaos. I'd support all of those issues you mention being added to Wikipedia. No favouratism for any party. These are the issues they are experiencing, and the way those parties are changing. It has been covered in the media. I will start to look for references. But they are different issues affecting each party. Surely, changes affecting how a party functions belong in that party's article. I'll probably have some of the party members after me with knives (again), but this kind of information is what makes Wikipedia independent from the official party websites.Lester 12:22, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
While info on declining participation in political parties generally is interesting and important, the dramatic and continuing decline in membership in the ALP (and coalition) over the last 20 years is specifically relevant to this page. The decline is linked to lots of factors - the rise of poll driven policy generation, campaigns dominated by paid advertising not grass-roots campaigning, presidential style elections, deliberate "dumbing down" of issues debate and endlessly repeated "sound bite" sized messaging, etc., etc. The key impact is the one Lester identified - replacement of grass-roots members with corporate dollars and machine candidate selection. It's worth noting that Greens membership continues to grow with almost zero driven by stacking, so it's not a universal problem for Australian parties. Chrismaltby (talk) 13:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)