Politics With Michelle Grattan: Labor President Wayne Swan On The Party's Coming National Conference

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Next week the labor Party will hold its national conference in Brisbane. It's the first face-to-face conference in five years. These conferences don't have anything like the bite they once did, but there's still a chance for the party's rank and file to have a shout about issues. More than 400 delegates will be there. Most of the delegates are aligned to a faction, and for the first time in decades the left will have the largest slice of the numbers.

AUKUS and the Stage 3 tax cuts are expected to be among the hot topics, but the conference will be carefully managed – there will be no defeats for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Ahead of the conference, we have already seen the government change its stance on Palestine, a sensitive subject among the left and right factions of the party.

In this podcast we talk with Wayne Swan, the Labor Party National President. Swan was treasurer and deputy prime minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments.

National conferences have“enormous power” Swan claims, denying they have lost clout, and casting the conference as more of a“partnership” between the party and the parliamentary caucus:

Recently, Labor assistant minister Andrew Leigh strongly criticised the stranglehold the factions have on the party. Swan is in complete disagreement with Leigh:

On the conference issues, Swan says:

Swan as treasurer went through the global financial crisis, when Australia managed to avoid a recession. Swan's former chief of staff, Jim Chalmers, is now in the economic hot seat. Swan believes Australians now are much more accepting of government intervention, using COVID as an example:

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