Date: Friday 24 July
Time: 3:00pm – 3:50pm
Location: Fringe Room 1
Organisation: Chifley Research Centre
In the words of Wayne Swan: “Democracy is being buffeted across the world and the far right is on the march. A small crop of extraordinarily wealthy plutocrats is financing the battle… What marks them out is the depth of their hostility to employee rights, to consumer interests, to democratic forms of government, and to racial equality…
“This moment does not call for antiseptic centrism. It does not call for tepid incrementalism. Some now counsel that the answer to right-wing populism is to retreat to what they like to call the radical centre, trimming and hedging in the hope of offending no one. I say the radical centre, so defined, is neither radical nor a centre. It is a bunker. Decades as a grassroots politician tell me that people crave conviction over caution, from a party that knows what it believes and is willing to say so.”
The reemergence of the far right threatens not only to dismantle the vestiges of the social democratic states built after the Second World War, but to destroy democracy itself.
How do we advocate for a new economic structure that delivers opportunity and equality for working people and rebuilds broken communities? How do we invest in people and places to restore the great social democratic systems that built the middle-class, and ensured peace and security for the post-war generations?
This panel brings together political leaders and thinkers from Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Germany to explore how our movements and our parties can rebuild a genuinely transformative politics, one which will put a definitive end to the myth of trickle-down economics and restore the opportunity for working and middle-class people that only we can deliver.
Panel:
- Emma Dawson – Executive Director, Chifley Research Centre (Moderator)
- The Hon. Wayne Swan – Outgoing ALP National President and former Treasurer of Australia
- The Hon. Josh MacAlister MP – Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Children and Families, UK
- Nerissa Henry – Women’s Vice-President, New Zealand Labour Party
- Alison Pennington – Chief Economist, The McKell Institute
- Andreas Radtke – Executive Director, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Australia
