Flying the flag for a fight nobody else wanted to have

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Anthony Albanese has become remarkably good at making Labor arguments disappear. Not by winning them, but by ensuring they never get to the floor of the ALP national conference.

So when the ratbags at the left-wing Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) lobbed a proposal to rip the Union Jack from the nation’s flag – a suggestion that had News Corp websites predictably frothing before delegates had even picked up their lanyards – it stood out precisely because so few other fights had survived the prime minister’s pre-conference clean-up.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the national Labor conference in 2023.Alex Ellinghausen

“We need to strip away the constant reminders of the old ruling class and colonial empire,” the union policy states. “Symbols of oppression, like the Union Jack on our flag and offensive colonial statues, must be removed from public life.”

The proposal sits alongside calls for greater solidarity with Indigenous Australians, reviving Labor’s commitment to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, despite the referendum result. It also includes higher top marginal tax rates, wealth and inheritance taxes, significantly higher taxes on gas exports and universally free essential services.

But this stuff, under this prime minister, won’t be debated in good faith any time soon.

It’s a long way from the Albanese who once occupied campus buildings and scaled Sydney University’s clock tower in protest.

Albanese has spent three terms as Labor leader learning that the easiest conference is the one where nobody argues about anything. His operation had methodically vacuumed up the contentious debates weeks ago. A potentially awkward motion over Palestinian statehood? Settled. Climate? Tidied away. AI? Headed off with a major speech.

Reflecting on ABC TV’s Kitchen Cabinet this week, Albanese mused that if he met his younger self today, the pair would be “having a disagreement … no question about that.” Politics, he told Annabel Crabb, teaches you to “learn, and you can change your position.”

Perhaps no lesson has been embraced more enthusiastically than the value of internal discipline.

Albanese even offered an admiring assessment of John Howard, observing that the former Liberal prime minister “understood his party” and “had control of the caucus”. It was one of the more revealing moments of the interview. The former Hard Left firebrand has become Labor’s chief manager of expectations, disputes and, when necessary, dissent.

Conference, once Labor’s annual festival of ideological trench warfare, increasingly resembles a well-run shareholders’ meeting.

Nature, however, abhors a vacuum. So apparently does the Left, which explains the curious role now being played by the AMWU.

As Albanese’s office quietly stripped contentious motions from the conference agenda, the union wandered in carrying a 32-page manifesto that looked like it had escaped from a Labor conference of another era. Nationalisation. A public bank. A wealth tax. Free university. And, of course, another debate about the flag.

Asked about punting the Union Jack from the flag on breakfast television before the conference, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil repeatedly downplayed the union’s manifesto, saying Labor’s priorities were “around the kitchen table”.

“It’s not something that I’ve had a moment to think about. I’m focused on the housing issues that are affecting millions of people around our country,” she said, adding that cost-of-living issues and home ownership were top of the list.

Dai Le, the independent MP who wore a dress with the design of the Australian flag on the floor of parliament for her maiden speech in 2022, gave the story a life of its own, saying the union should prioritise protecting Australian jobs and businesses rather than pursuing what she described as a “symbol war”.

“I’m very proud as a refugee; it’s a flag that has welcomed myself and my family... It’s a flag that represents this country that’s given them a second chance,” she said.

Albanese recalled on Kitchen Cabinet that he once eventually ended a university occupation because activists had become so consumed by consensus that “nothing happened”.

Thirty years later, he’s solved the problem another way. Try not to let the argument start in the first place.

Which leaves the AMWU playing a role the prime minister once relished himself: the restless Left, waving the flag – or, in this case, trying to replace it.

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Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.