ALP needs big-picture manifesto, not small-target strategy Peter van Onselen Contributing editor AUSTRALIAN JANUARY 17, 2015 THE Labor Party goes into the 2015 parliamentary year riding high in the polls, with plenty of political ammunition to attack the Coalition. The budget fell flat, Tony Abbott’s personal numbers are down and he is suffering from a trust deficit even worse than the fiscal deficit (which has also blown out on his watch). All of which is to say nothing about the problems the government has in dealing with the Senate. The collection of crossbenchers threatens key government initiatives and even when compromise can be found the danger is that what passes into law is so compromised that the fiscal purpose is dashed, or the end product is distorted by complications. Either way voters tend to blame the government for what follows rather than the senators who forced changes. Just this week we saw the dysfunctional way Team Abbott backflipped on the Medicare rebate changes it made late last year. The lack of conviction is astounding and only likely to become more obvious as the PM seeks to improve his political fortunes. Labor is therefore in the box seat at the start of this political year, but it would be a mistake for the opposition to adopt the Kim Beazley strategy of remaining a small target and hoping that anger with the Coalition is enough to change the government. That was Beazley’s approach ahead of the 2001 election, before the politics late that year changed with the arrival of the MV Tampa in August and the September 11 terrorist attacks. While the old adage is largely true that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them, oppositions can also lose elections there for the taking if they don’t make the case for change, especially in a first term, or if events conspire against them. Don’t forget the Abbott government has 90 seats in the House of Representatives but needs only 76 to form government. The point is that it can afford to lose a significant number of MPs without actually being consigned to the wrong side of the treasury benches. This pushes the number of seats Labor needs to win to return to power well up the electoral pendulum. We have seen it many times before: first-term governments coming close to losing elections, but scraping over the line. Julia Gillard did it in 2010 (albeit as a minority government), John Howard did it in 1998. In 1984, Bob Hawke’s poor first re-election showing was hidden somewhat by the enlargement of parliament, which meant the number of seats the party won grew even though the ALP’s vote went backwards. The Victorian state result in November last year will have given Labor hope that it can do what hasn’t happened since 1931 federally: knock off a government after one term. But the result in Victoria, while raising hopes for Labor, has also alerted Abbott and his team to the risks they face (including via modern campaigning approaches). We saw the start of the barnacle removal process designed to lift the Coalition’s performance late last year, with policy backflips aplenty, and undoubtedly there will be more to come. While Abbott probably isn’t doing enough — in December we saw a limited reshuffle that preserved much dead wood — he has time to do more. He has time to start listening to his backbench, and learning from his mistakes, as John Howard always did. Which brings us back to Labor. The risk for Bill Shorten’s team is that closer to an election voters baulk at the idea of re-electing Labor so soon after the Rudd-Gillard years. However dysfunctional Abbott’s team has been and continues to be, it pales into insignificance alongside what occurred under Rudd-Gillard-Rudd. We can argue about the policy settings between the two major parties, and no doubt will continue to do so closer to the next election. But if the Shorten-led opposition thinks it can simply point to dysfunction in the Abbott government, alongside broken promises, I doubt that will get them over the line in 2016. More likely it will wound the government, handing Labor a large number of seats ahead of a second-term blitz to reclaim power. To win office after just one term in the political wilderness Labor needs to do more than emulate Abbott’s negative politics in opposition. Rhetorically, Shorten has recognised this. On November 26, he told the National Press Club: “2014 was defined by the force of Labor’s resistance. Today I commit to you that Labor will be defined in 2015 by the power of our ideas.” It remains to be seen if he is referring to quality policy development or simple stump speeches with broad values statements. Not since the days of John Hewson’s Fightback package have we seen an opposition prepared to spell out policy details well in advance of an election. It might seem strange to point to what Paul Keating described as “the longest suicide note in political history” as Labor’s best shot of winning the next election, but that’s what Fightback represents. Perhaps not in terms of policy settings — Labor would agree with little that was in Hewson’s document — but the notion of a manifesto for office is the only thing that will allow voters to return to Labor after one term. There are many policy settings on which Labor could build such a manifesto. Superannuation reform, a globally tailored climate change policy, federation reform that benefits health and education. Even tax reforms that provide for strong growth without letting the big end of town off the taxation hook. In Chris Bowen and Andrew Leigh — as spokesman and assistant spokesman for the Treasury — Labor has a dynamic pair controlling these key portfolios. Bowen was always a well-regarded minister during Labor’s time in power, certainly when running financial services. Indeed, he was the first and only promotion to cabinet in Kevin Rudd’s first term. Leigh, a former professor of economics, has written more academic books than the rest of the parliament combined. New ideas in opposition are always harder than in government, because governments have resources at their disposal. Bowen’s knowledge of financial issues and governance combined with Leigh’s outside-the-box thinking just might lift Labor’s economic credibility. But only if the leader is willing to stand up to trade unions that stifle economic reforms in policy areas such as industrial relations, financial services and superannuation. If modern Labor is going to live up to the reforming legacy of the Hawke and Keating years it simply must work out what it needs to retain and what it must throw away from its historical positioning. That’s what Labor in the 1980s did, and it served the party of the worker and the nation well. It kickstarted two decades of uninterrupted economic growth and built a legacy of which the Labor Party can be proud. Peter van Onselen is a professor at the University of Western Australia. Illustration: Eric Lobbecke Source: Supplied
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 10:48:15 +0000
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