Nobody knows anything.
— William Goldman, on Hollywood
Well, May Day and the first bite of autumn, and here we are in the middle — is it the middle — of this scattered, unfocused slogathon. Your correspondent returned from the UK just as it began, revved up on Brexit and the gilets jaunes, ready to keep the adrenaline flowing and… this? Where’s the energy?
There’s one reason and one reason only for that lack of pace — Labor has adopted a hybrid “big ticket”/small target strategy, in the belief that Australians are wary of grand schemes, and that highfalutin ideas provide a big target for Newscorpse to shamble towards. The Coalition is not going to propose any grand schema, so in the absence of such, Labor’s unwillingness to propose a grand theme has created a political vacuum — one in which a debate between two future prime ministers gains less than a quarter million viewers.
When last week I suggested that Labor’s approach was big ticket/small target, I was howled at by loyalists, aggrieved that our Bill was being done over etc., and proposing that positions on renewables, childcare etc. were the big picture we had been looking for.
No, they’re not. Big ticket is not big picture. That’s precisely the danger. Without an integrated vision, the proposals Labor is piling up look like a dizzying spendathon, paid for by some heavy (albeit wholly justified) tax takes. I dunno about other people on this campaign — possibly they’re too busy trawling Van Badham’s timeline — but what I hear is a wariness, an uncertainty about a lot of this stuff, about fast transitions to electric cars, about a sudden rush to renewables.
I don’t think that’s just a News Corp beat up. I think it is a deep-seated caution asserting itself in a broad middle-working class, who see Labor proposing big changes to the texture of everyday life — a proposal not to change the system, but the lifeworld — while at the same time attacking the Greens for being “out of touch” with ordinary Australians.
The trouble with this feint is that most members of the Labor elite are now so isolated from everyday life that they cannot recognise that their basic orientation is now technocratic, system-prioritising, cutting against the grain of contemporary Australian life — which, for all our bluster, is anxious, family-centred and socially atomised. In other words, Labor is simply allowing a rerun of 1996: allowing the Liberals to present themselves as the party of the intimate, the familiar, the worth-holding-onto, and Labor as the party on the side of system processes which construct the everyday life of the populace as an object to be reshaped.
The cruel factor in this is that Labor already solved this problem once, in 2007, with the Kevin ’07 campaign. Or rather Kevin Rudd solved it, bringing to Labor all the techniques of bold vision, populism, attack, and mythmaking that a student of Mao’s career was likely to have. Rudd’s subsequent troubles as a PM has made Labor wary of such — and obscures the fact that Labor hadn’t moved on one iota from its 1996 failure until Rudd came along.
Now look, that said, that may all be wrong. Whatever Newspoll is saying, William Bowe’s poll aggregator has Labor with a strong lead. And the big ticket/small target strategy may be tailored to this or that bit of this or that clutch of seats Labor’s aiming at. But can such a hybrid strategy be maintained? For the paradox is that what Labor is proposing is as radical as anything it has offered in its history — the state as an enabling agent on the different fronts of life, from energy to childcare — and leans towards historical transformation.
In our era, such proposals are at the outer edge of post-capitalism, looking to a time when state, community and market relations will exist in a fundamentally different ensemble to the way they do now. You wouldn’t want to exaggerate this — the childcare proposals still funnel this stuff through the private sector — but for more than 30 years (with the Rudd interregnum) Labor has been a left neoliberal party, abandoning whole sections of the working population that it purported to represent.
The question for Labor, as it heads towards the final weeks and the campaign “launch”, is whether the deliberate omission of a big picture creates a vacuum — which raises the question of whether the party has not merely the ability, but the desire to lead.
If you are pitching for the big job in an atomised society, you better either conform to that deep privacy of experience — prosper in the belly of the McMansion — or you better offer us a way of transcending it, to rise higher than we are, to be the better society, the desire for which lives in our hearts. To be honest, given the quasi-totalitarian nature of the major media we have now — Newscorp may be psychotically partisan, but Nine and Seven are clearly right-wing outfits — I don’t see any alternative but to summon up forces that can surround and encompass the media system.
The wonks may say I’m wrong but the point is, well, nobody knows anything and as a progressive I’d rather win or lose for the bold vision than for a list of line items. If May Day is not a time to be bold, when is? Fought to a loss or draw the way we’re going, it will be a bleak winter indeed.
Do you think Labor is avoiding the big picture? Write to boss@crikey.com.au with your full name and let us know.
“For the paradox is that what Labor is proposing is as radical as anything it has offered in its history — the state as an enabling agent on the different fronts of life, from energy to childcare — and leans towards historical transformation.”
Well yeah, except I’m struggling to see the paradox bit. I don’t see “big-ticket/small target” strategy. I see “big ticket and big picture” plus avoid unnecessary provocations.
Gradually, by working hard, keeping calm, and proposing big policies, Shorten has convinced me that he is from a labour tradition I can vote for without too many qualms. (There was too much flash bang about Rudd – Gillard and Swan did a good job.) Someone in these comments once quipped that “Green since Tampa” is pretty much a party on its own. Well that’s me – but I’m voting ALP this time round.
Could be wrong but that’s the way I think middle Australia is going, from the other direction, too.
I agree with you Keith1. It is frustrating to see cheap shots from the hard left when all it does is give opponents a free leg up. You cannot legislate anything from opposition
‘You cannot legislate anything from opposition.’ Surely, at this time, this is the point. Get the LNP out of power and start on the long game of repairing the damage they have done and would continue to do, but with more of a conservative ‘mandate’. Mind you, I don’t think the LNP are conservatives, but reactionaries. And corrupt.
“start on the long game of repairing the damage they have done”
If only. In practice, I fear an incoming Labor government will end up dealing with the twin energy-vortexes of Murdoch’s attack dogs on the one hand and power-plays by the likes of the CFMEU and the big public sector unions seeking to consign ‘neo-liberalism’ to history with self-serving, unrealistic demands on the other. Give it a year or so and the only ‘vision’ they’ll be left with is survival. That said, I’ll still vote for them!
As per usual.
The reason Krudd toppled because he was not interested in appeasing the Right faction.
That it was la Reine Ranga, the soi-disant leader of the “Left” faction who allowed herself to be used & abused by the apparatchiks from the bowels of the Black Lubyanka of SussexSt was simply tragic.
She would have been our Marianne but sold that for a mess of pottage, thing gruel indeed.
its not a cheap shot. ive said in the article that labor may have tge strategy right. on the other hand, they may not. and if they havent, this feeling of a curious vacuum may be the reason
Yep.
You’re thinking about it too hard, Guy. Labor’s big picture pitch is that this is a referendum on the future. Older people on the progressive side of politics are worried about the world they are leaving their kids – one blighted by climate change, growing inequality, the marketisation of everything and the cynical undermining of democratic institutions by insiders feathering their own nests.
This isn’t incompatible with family-centred anxiety. It’s an answer to it. People intuitively feel that the system, as they knew it, is breaking down, the centre cannot hold and all that. They’re also alarmed at the appeal to extremes and the threat of violence. Labor’s pitch is to the radical centre, for want of a better term. These are pretty much the same people voting for Zali Steggal in Warringah (the climate change with franking credit refunds intact faction).
Most people from the centre left to centre right are tired of the meaningless argy bargy which has led to us putting off dealing with the ‘big ticket’ issues, as you call them, for the past decade. Politics has been reduced to a forum for ambitious young fogeys whose minds are still in the university quadrangle and whose great ambition is get a gig on Q and A. Issues like climate change solely exist in the political classes’ minds as debating points for their culture wars. Nothing changes.
Maybe Shorten (admittedly more at home in the backrooms) hasn’t successfully spelled it out, but I think the big picture is that this election is a referendum on the future. We either start preparing for that future or we continue the adolescent biff-bash pantomime of the past decade.
its not a cheap shot. ive said in the article that labor may have tge strategy right. on the other hand, they may not. and if they havent, this feeling of a curious vacuum may be the reason
I wholeheartedly agree, Mr Denmore. Guy’s stuff gets me to sigh a bit. When you look at the options, the ALP’s policy changes are enough of a big picture for me this time round. It is enough that the ALP is engaging with social problems and regulating the upstart forest of private providers that contracts cannot keep accountable and which batten on the taxes we pay for education, health and care for the young and old.
Yes, we do have near totalitarian MSM and they are a threat but we have to do more than use Facebook or Twitter to engage with their one eyed picture of the world. If we don’t settle for the ALP now, what world will my grandchildren inherit?
The reality is the ALP isn’t just running against the LNP. Its opposition is most of the mainstream media, led by the Orcs at News Corp. If it runs really big picture, it gets done over by the Terrorgraph for being out of touch with the high-vis gang on struggle street. If it gets too detailed, the cadet trainspotters in the press gallery go for the gotcha. In the meantime, Morrison swans around the country skulling schooners, shearing sheep and mugging it, thumbs-up for the cameras without anyone putting a finger on him.
but Mr D
the language yr using – ‘refefendum on the future’ – is exactly the sort of language im suggesting labor use, but which they dont! Yr supplying the vision you wish labor wld speak to
Blind Freddie has sharper ‘vision’ than Shill Bortensold.
FFS, this ModBot is seriously in need of replacement.
Has no-one else found that?
In 96 Labor was in govt so today isn’t comparable. Are electric cars and renewables a threat to our current way of life ? To died in the wool goons and petrol heads maybe but most of us just want to drive our cars and get cheaper energy bills.
Sorry Guy, this looks like a total misreading of the situation. It’s basically proposing to change our society from a greedy, ‘trickle down’ economy, to a fair society based system. It’s been more bravery than I’ve seen since Whitlam and he had the benefit of an almost certain win ahead, more so than Shorten.
And for what? To be accused as a small target spendathon?
Seriously, Guy, this is why advancing to a fairer society has many hurdles, not the least of which are tired scribes who think they’ve seen it all.
I enjoy a lot of your writing, but you’ve missed the mark here.
what ive been seeing, or hearing, in the past week or so is people remarking – some with some doubt – that there seem to be a lot of v.expensive proposals from Labor. not saying thats authoritative – im just trying to work out why theres a sense of something missing from labors message
The big party machines make it near on impossible to vote for anyone else. Our elections have become theatre slogans and pork barreling. I like the concept of three-term politicians. At least this way we would not get as many busy and forgetful members who conveniently “forget to check their credit card” after family holidays and others who try on every conceivable perk with impunity. With three-year terms would be more difficult to hijack a parties agenda by long-serving seat warmers, who are propped up by big donations.
Australia is one of the best countries in the world, however, the combination of very profitable foreign-owned companies with strong lobby groups, deep pockets, and elected officials with few morals and ethics are dragging us down.