PM wants Labor’s conference to ‘showcase’ the party, but not its AUKUS division

The PM said Labor’s national conference in Adelaide this month would be “a real opportunity to bring the whole Labor movement with us on our direction”. But what about the vexed matter of AUKUS, asks Michelle Grattan.

As Labor parliamentarians fled Canberra late this week for their long winter break, they could reassure themselves the bruises sustained in a difficult budget session were fading.

Broken promises might inflict some long-term damage on the prime minister, and the jury’s still out on the effect of the controversial tax changes. But Anthony Albanese is confident his belated embrace of boldness has paid off, as he moves on to the next big thing which, in party terms, is Labor’s national conference in Adelaide on July 23–25.

This was already in Albanese’s mind when he addressed Tuesday’s caucus, declaring the conference would be “a real opportunity to bring the whole Labor movement with us on our direction”.

It would be a chance to “showcase ourselves as an inclusive, open, democratic party”, he said, contrasting the “schmozzle” on the other side of politics.

This week the Australian Labor Party (ALP) national secretariat dispatched Labor’s draft platform and conference agenda to the some 400 delegates to what will be the party’s 50th national conference.

Held every three years, the modern conference is a dramatically different affair from the so-called “36 faceless men” conclaves of olden days.

In recent decades, national conferences have become increasingly micromanaged and distinctly less gritty, with a little dissent built in as a gesture to a party rank-and-file more radical than a now quiescent parliamentary caucus.

Long gone are the days when a Labor national conference could dictate to the parliamentarians, as did the famous special one held in 1963 over the North-West Cape communications facility that services US submarines.

Labor, then in opposition, paid a heavy political price when its leaders, Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam, were photographed waiting outside for the conference (that included one woman among its faceless men) to make its decision. As........

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