Labor Right - Political Views

Political Views

An overriding stated theme of Labor right wing governance is of balance between progressive social change and the need for sound economic management as the pathway to community development and growth. For Labor right, there is a time for change and a time to maintain the status quo and that time is measured by what Labor right thinks to be community expectations and needs rather than "political correctness".

Many Roman Catholics have been prominent and influential in the Labor Party, both inside and outside the auspices of the Labor Right faction. Labor socialists and Protestant conservatives alike have historically criticized the faction as beholden to papal authority. However, this has decreased since the 1970s with the gradual erosion of sectarianism in Australian politics.

The Right views itself as the more mainstream and fiscally responsible faction within the ALP. In an address to the Australian Fabian Society, Right faction luminary Robert Ray warned that not "every candidate needs an Honours Degree in Apparatchikism". In the same speech he described factionalism gone wrong, criticising "the suffocating collaboration of factional Daleks – such as Conroy and Carr.

The Right is most famous for its support of Third Way policies over Labor's traditional social democratic/democratic socialist policies, such as the economic rationalist policies of the Hawke and Keating governments, like floating the Australian Dollar in 1983, reductions in trade tariffs, taxation reforms, changing from centralised wage-fixing to enterprise bargaining, the privatisation of Qantas and Commonwealth Bank, and deregulating the banking system.