Australian Labor Party backs coal, gas and “border protection” On two critical issues, climate change and the global refugee crisis, this week’s Labor Party “special platform conference” demonstrated the utter political bankruptcy of all those who have insisted for decades that Labor, a thoroughly capitalist party, can somehow be pressured in a progressive direction. In Labor’s tightly-controlled two-day event, one of the longest sessions—lasting less than an hour—involved hand-picked trade union and party representatives paying lip service to the need for action on the environmental crisis and criticising the pro-fossil fuel policy of the Liberal-National Coalition government.