Gillard backs Labor reform push

Updated

Prime Minister Julia Gillard wants Labor to embrace US-style 'primaries' to help reverse a membership decline and return the party to its roots in collective "social democracy".

Ms Gillard outlined her vision for the party in a speech at Old Parliament House in Canberra today.

She said education was the key to Australia's future economic success, citing her own achievements as evidence of Whitlam-era university education reforms at work.

"As others have put it before me: the light on the hill now shines from a lamp on the desk," she said.

And she backed plans - first outlined in Labor's internal review into its performance at the last election - for American-style 'primaries' to pre-select candidates.

The party's internal review of the 2010 election campaign revealed a party in decline, with a membership that felt alienated and disenfranchised.

Report authors Steve Bracks, Bob Carr and John Faulkner recommended giving non-members a say in preselecting candidates in a system similar to that used in many US states.

"Many commentators have predicted that social democracy has passed its use by date - that our notions of collective action, solidarity, unionism, are incompatible with today's individualism," Ms Gillard said.

"Friends, I am here today to say to you, that fashionable thinking is a mistake."

Ms Gillard said Labor had to face up to the "hard truth" that it was out of power in Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales and had seen its sister parties thrown out of power in New Zealand and the UK.

"In Europe, the tide runs against the centre-left," she said.

"And President Obama, whilst confronting far more grievous economic challenges, faces comparable problems with hard right wing activism that is long on complaints and conspiracy theories and short on solutions."

Ms Gillard said she wanted the ALP conference to agree to set a target of recruiting 8,000 new grass-roots members next year.

She said the proposals would modernise Labor but predicted they would generate "robust debate" at the party conference.

"I don't want to get my own way on every precise detail. I don't want everything sewn up by some meeting at midnight the night before. I do want change," she said.

Topics: alp, government-and-politics, gillard-julia, australia

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