If Anthony Albanese wants a long and memorable run as prime minister, he could do worse than read the doctoral dissertation of his Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers.
The Chalmers thesis analyses the prime ministership of the legendary Paul Keating, who has been out of office now for a quarter of a century but who remains a genuine Labor hero. Most likely it’s already a manual for success for the young treasurer who, aged only 44, can probably look forward to another two decades in public life, hopefully (for him) in government — or even as leader of his party and as prime minister.
The thesis, submitted in 2004 when Chalmers was working in the Labor Party head office while also researching at Australian National University, traces the sources a Labor prime minister needs to tap if they are to succeed. And it assesses where Keating won and lost.
Chalmers’ overwhelming view is that prime ministers are only as powerful as allowed by the institutions that surround them. Those institutions are the party caucus, the cabinet, the bureaucracy, the Parliament, the media and the public.
The prime minister sits at their apex as head of government, chair of cabinet, leader of the Parliament’s majority party, chief government spokesperson, focal point for election campaigns, strategist, advocate, staff manager and dispenser of patronage.
Chalmers begins with the assertion that judgment of political leadership rests on a prime minister’s ability to manage interactions with all these groups successfully and simultaneously. Perhaps Scott Morrison should have read it a few years ago too.
And Chalmers concludes with the view that prime ministers never can be completely dominant: “Their job is too reliant on the support of others.”
His thesis is a curation of a great deal of thought about Keating, much loved by the left but still reviled by the right despite his market-opening initiative as treasurer.
In part, it draws from the theory advanced by Dr Glyn Davis, now head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (yes, the country is that small), that success for Labor PMs relies on a “leadership bargain” in which the caucus trades off elements of control for the winning capacity of a leader.
He quotes Don Watson, the former Keating speechwriter and later biographer: “Power is the currency of politics, the reason for it the stock in trade.”
Indeed. And in the period since Keating, even since Chalmers wrote his thesis, more power has been seen to reside with prime ministers.
Most of this is self-evident — or would appear so. But how many PMs since Keating have failed in balancing the relationships they need? John Howard was masterful at controlling his partyroom until the near end, but lost the electorate. Kevin Rudd started to lose the electorate and the partyroom, and cabinet soon followed while the bureaucracy was never there. Julia Gillard barely had the partyroom or the electorate.
Same with Tony Abbott (although the electorate never got to decide) and Malcolm Turnbull. And it’s becoming more apparent that Morrison only had his partyroom because they couldn’t see a viable alternative.
Chalmers attributes the success of Keating (but doesn’t sugarcoat his flaws) to five factors: the authority that came from an unexpected electoral win, his personal charm, the factional system that secured his position, his relationship with key union figures, and an active policy agenda that appealed to the Labor heartland.
Albanese has some but not all these attributes. He won from opposition, he’s liked in the partyroom and at the membership level, he has good industrial relationships (but they will be tested in coming wage rounds), and he has pledged but is yet to move on the policy issues that will appeal to a party heartland now vastly different from that Keating appealed to.
And then there’s the question of how he uses power and the patience of those around him for what they might see as excess.
Albanese has been around long enough to have watched and learnt these lessons. But if he hasn’t, he might find a valuable refresher from Chalmers’ thesis, titled “Brawler Statesman: Paul Keating and prime ministerial leadership in Australia“.
It’s held in the Theses Library in the ANU’s RG Menzies Building — where else would it be?
PJK was a great PM because he was genuinely good leader, along with the other skill Jim Chalmers apparently identifies. So was Hawke and Gough. A great leader must exude confidence, courage and inspiring vision. We have had too few go that ilk.
And Madonna, really. Do you think Morrison had the wit to learn anything other than internal party perversion. He faked confidence, was cowardly (evidenced by his inherent secrecy and dishonesty) and has not had an original thought in his life. It is insulting to even think he could have learned anything from PJK. Morrison was and is irredeemingly appalling. But Australians needed over 3 years to work out was was alway obvious.
PJK was not a great PM, he was a frightful, shocking PM who gave us consistently high unemployment over years, peaking at 11.3% in 1993, brought in wage enterprise bargaining (bad luck if you relied on federal awards), kicked away many workplace protections, sold East Timor down the river, gave us offshore processing, sold the Commonwealth Bank and QANTAS, had many bad people in his cabinet like the paedophile Senator Bob Collins. He was part of a government which brought in HECS after the good Gough you mentioned abolished uni fees so people like me could get a free education. Keating was more interested in antique clocks than the suffering or fortunes of working people. He was a false leader and was not a good leader. He was a good politician but people saw through him in the end. Honestly I preferred him over Howard but it was hard to see the difference. Hawke was a good PM who ran out of puff. Labor’s best years were from 1983-1990 yet this was also the time that real wages went backwards by 10%. I am a bit ambivalent about him and the only one good thing he really did was kill the GST for a further 7 years. To have that introduced in 1993 would have worsened a very long and deep recession.
Keating was witty and fun and cutting and dreadful all wrapped up.
He has been ignored by the right of the Labor Party however, he forever is one that the true believers look towards.
In our system, the PM is, and should only ever be, the “Primus Inter Pares”. I feel that Mr Albanese gets this.
Or in Paul Keating’s case a “Primate Into Paris”.
My own PhD is available from Cambridge University for a small printing fee and mailing costs. A little extra if you want the embossed hard cover version. It is from DPMMS in Chaos Theory, so appropriate for anyone wanting a refreshing and left field view of Australian politics since 1992.
Hard copy? Haven’t they discovered computers in Cambridge yet?
So Morrison, Abbott and Turnbull could have done with a reading too – but King wasn’t touting it then?
“Wrong party” for such riding instructions – her Limited News Party was doing ‘well enough’ without it?
Right wing authoritarians and their followers have different requirements for political success than left wing progressives – typically they have fewer and simpler imperatives focused on submission to authority and conformance to norms. Progressive types tend to a more complex set of imperatives focused more on fairness, inclusion and openness to new ideas. Importantly, the right wing authoritarians are strongly influenced by in/out-group dynamics, with quite restricted notions about who fits in their in-group; progressives tend to be less influenced by in/out-group dynamics, and also tend to have far broader ideas about in-groups, which often includes lots of people who would never consider the progressives part of /their/ in-group.
Right wing leaders can achieve quite a lot of success by simply pushing hard on themes related to authority, and particularly their authority as strong leaders reinforcing and enforcing common sense rules of normality. Progressive leaders have to thread a much more complex path through competing priorities, finding a way to develop the authority needed to actually get anything done without offending against competing imperatives around fairness and equality and so forth. And all while having to support that fairness and equality for large parts of society, including people who are actively antagonistic to those ideas. It’s all a massively difficult balancing act.
I’d argue that Hawke was better at that than Keating, for the most part, though Keating did have his successes. The /failings/ of Keating are probably more illustrative of the challenges, though.