Labor's policy reversal illustrates hypocrisy

Some people might be surprised that the Labor caucus this week adopted a completely new position on the vexed issues of retail trading hours and uranium mining without either being put to the vote.

They might be surprised because it's the first they've heard of it - that detail has been strangely missing from every media report on Labor's new policies - or it could be because they thought the ALP operated more democratically than that.

Whatever, those hardy souls who previously supported Labor's agreed opposition to Sunday trading and the promise to close any uranium mine the Barnett Government allowed to start in WA must have suddenly had a change of heart.

When asked why there was no vote on changes of such significance, new Labor leader Mark McGowan says they were the conditions under which he took on the job. Which still doesn't explain why Labor MPs would not consider the prospective leader's demands, debate their merits or otherwise and democratically decide an outcome.

Leadership, you say? If it is, it's leadership of the meek, the voiceless and the very easily led.

Did no one in caucus want to record that they were not prepared to go all the way with Mr McGowan?

Did none of the free thinkers in the State parliamentary Labor Party remember this was the way their Federal colleagues got themselves into all sorts of trouble with Kevin Rudd?

Or is the Messiah complex now part of Labor tradition?

That aside, Mr McGowan's two new positions are more about politics than they are about good policy.

It's a no-brainer to neutralise two of your party's electoral problems by adopting the position of your opponents, which is effectively all he's done.

As recently as August 18, 2009, Mr McGowan was lecturing his Liberal opponents on the impropriety of turning their backs on the outcome of the 2005 referendum on retail trading.

The second question in that referendum asked whether the WA community would benefit if metropolitan trading hours were extended for six hours on Sundays?

Nearly 60 per cent of us voted No to that question, some 672,478 electors.

"Why is the Premier afraid of a referendum result?" Mr McGowan challenged during the August 2009 debate. "Why is he afraid of what the people said at the referendum four years ago?

"The Liberal Party policy stated: The Liberals respect the decision of people at the referendum.

"That was a lie. To say that the Liberals respected the decision of the people at the referendum was an absolute and complete lie."

Now, to change your mind on a political position is one thing. To adopt a completely different principle on how to resolve the matter ethically is something else again.

"We are not saying that there will never be extended trading hours," Mr McGowan said in 2009. "We are saying that both sides should take a policy to the next election.

"Both sides should decide what their policy is and the people should have their say at the next election on this issue."

And that is the fundamental flaw in Labor's new position to adopt Sunday trading immediately, which its caucus swallowed without a murmur of complaint and which Mr McGowan managed to utter without blushing.

Mr McGowan's caveat that his support for the Government's position on Sunday trading comes with the suggestion that the Barnett Government attempt to engineer legislation that would allow objecting workers to opt out is weak on two fronts.

First, he says he will accept Sunday trading without the opt-out clause and, second, it shows he still needs to throw a bone to shop assistants' union boss Joe Bullock whose religious beliefs have dictated Labor's policy for years.

As for Mr McGowan's new position on uranium mining, he's like the girl who is prepared to get just a little bit pregnant. No one in caucus thought of handing him a condom.

Eric Ripper's position that Labor would close any uranium mine the Barnett Government approved was as draconian as it was Dickensian. Just over the border in South Australia, a Labor Government is developing the biggest uranium mine in the world, supplying the world.

Mr McGowan uses the possible threat of legal compensation - a straw man if ever I saw one - to say any new mines can stay, rather than risk taxpayer funds. This is merely a throwback to the Hawke government's ridiculous three mines policy that Labor's national conference ditched several years ago.

All he has done is ensure Mines Minister Norman Moore works overtime before next year's election to get as many uranium projects as possible approved.

Wonderboy indeed.