DOUG CAMERON interviewed by ZAC GILLIES-PALMER
An interview with Doug Cameron
Once the left of the Australian Labor Party was committed to working-class politics. To avoid collapse, Labor must return to that legacy — but today’s Labor Left is more committed to neoliberalism and serving US foreign policy.
In 2019, Australian Labor Party (ALP) senator Doug Cameron summed up his eleven-year senate career with characteristic candor. “It all comes down to one thing: socialism,” he said.
Cameron’s words — and the commitment underlying them — stem from his career as a blue-collar unionist in the Hunter Valley, an industrial hub in New South Wales. Unlike his more urbane ALP colleagues, Cameron’s working-class demeanor resonated with Labor’s trade-union base. After all, he cut his political teeth working in shipyards, car plants, and power stations.
In 1973, on his first day at work, Cameron joined the Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union (AMWSU). A decade later, he was elected as an AMWSU organizer for the Hunter Valley before rising quickly through the union’s ranks. A series of amalgamations saw the AMWSU become the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), and from 1996 to 2007, Doug Cameron served as its national secretary.
Cameron left the union to stand as a Labor candidate for the Senate in the 2007 federal election, which former prime minister Kevin Rudd won in a landslide. Cameron’s commitment to Labor’s working-class roots quickly earned him a firebrand reputation that has not diminished since he retired in 2019.
Cameron spoke to Jacobin about the incumbent ALP government, offering his view on what PM Anthony Albanese should be doing as he approaches the 2025 election.
Zac Gillies-Palmer
What’s your assessment of the Labor government’s legislative record as it heads toward the federal election likely to be held in May?
Doug Cameron
The government has passed a lot of legislation that I regard as positive. But I also think the quality of reforms has been mixed. It’s not just the number of bills, but what they do for the working class — that’s the important test for me.
On that front, it’s been a mixed bag. I know the union movement has welcomed Labor’s industrial relations reforms, especially the legalization of multiemployer bargaining and new protections for gig-economy workers. But there is still much more Labor could have done to help people struggling on social security payments. And like many ALP members, I was concerned by the government’s decision to support Liberal Party tax cuts and the AUKUS military pact with the United States.
Zac Gillies-Palmer
Labor promised to implement those policies as part of its “small target” 2022 election strategy. What do you think should have been different about Labor’s approach?
Doug Cameron
I’m saying that Labor should have gone back to its values — that is, helping those who need help during the cost-of-living crisis. Of course, Labor will always do more for the working class than the Coalition — but the party should set itself a higher standard. At the very least, that standard should mean helping working-class people more than it has this term.
I must say, I always felt very comfortable as an ALP senator when Bill Shorten was the opposition leader, which is bizarre given the fights and differences I had with him and other members of the Labor Right faction over many years. That’s because Bill took a very good progressive agenda to the 2019 election, including a promise to abolish tax breaks for property speculators, like negative-gearing and capital-gains tax concessions. It was always the Left of the party that championed these issues — which is bizarre because now, although we have a Labor Left PM, Anthony Albanese has taken a very different approach.
Zac Gillies-Palmer
The counterargument is that Shorten took a progressive platform to the 2019 election and lost. Didn’t Albanese’s victory vindicate his small target strategy?
Jacobin for more