What does the Labor Party stand for?
I mean, really stand for. What values are in its DNA?
While Julia Gillard is signalling shifts to the right on asylum seekers and population, preparing a comprehensive backdown on the RSPT and talking about starting from scratch on convincing the community of the need for an emissions trading scheme, the answer has been hard to answer in recent years, and really since 1996 when the party turned its back on the economic reform legacy of Hawke and Keating.
It got harder to answer under Kevin Rudd.
If you had to pick three core Labor beliefs, you’d go for support for trade unions and an employee-friendly IR framework, big government over small government and progressive social policy.
Rudd was a mixed bag on social policy. There was the apology — indeed, two of them. The loathsome legacy of Brian Harradine, our refusal to fund family planning programs as part of our overseas aid budget, was reversed. But the ACT was again subjected to federal intervention for daring to permit gay unions, and Rudd never shied away from indicating his own conservative social views.
Mixed on trade unions, as well. Workchoices was dismantled and the Fair Work system erected in its place by Julia Gillard, but Gillard made a virtue of picking fights with unions as diverse as teachers’ unions and the CFMEU, complementing Rudd’s own emphasis as Opposition Leader that he had minimal union connections.
Only on increasing the role of Government did Rudd hew closely to Labor tradition, and it’s not as simplistic as calling him “big government” anyway. His significant increase in the level of government spending per GDP was in response to the Global Financial Crisis and aimed at preserving jobs, and the Government has committed to returning to a lower level of spending, rather than maintaining a permanent increase.
The GFC momentarily restored to Australian politics the appearance of an ideological divide over the size of government, although whether a Howard Government would have been as reticent about stimulus as the Coalition pretended to be from Opposition is an intriguing question. It’s hard to see John Howard, whose profligacy reached historic levels even before he faced electoral defeat, somehow pulling back on the purse strings as the world economy teetered on the precipice.
Even so, Kevin Rudd left office with one major achievement — along with Glenn Stevens, he presided over a massive and successful attempt to keep Australians in work and businesses open. Hundreds of thousands of people have better lives as a consequence of Rudd and Stevens’ handling of the GFC. Neither will ever get the credit they fully deserve for avoiding even coming close to the lingering fate of Europe and the US.
Otherwise, Rudd’s Prime Ministership is a long catalogue of missed opportunities.
Most grievously for Labor in the long-term, he failed to grasp an historic opportunity to re-define his party, to brand it in the way Hawke and Keating branded it. Instead, he let the drift of Opposition years continue, embracing moderate, easy reforms, avoiding the hard stuff. With strong opinion polls and an economic crisis that set conservatives back on their ideological heels, he had the opportunity to establish Labor as synonymous with economic reform, the architect of sustainable prosperity, of government in the national interest.
Labor isn’t alone in this problem. The Liberals similarly have an identity problem. John Howard was a big-government Prime Minister, entirely at odds with the small-government rhetoric that forms a core part of the party’s brand. Far from the rugged individualism of conservative rhetoric, it was the Howard Government that relentlessly pandered to Australians’ obsessive reliance on the state, through middle-class welfare and regional pork-barrelling.
Tony Abbott is heir to this contradictory legacy. If Malcolm Turnbull was a poor fit for his party because he was perceived as so progressive, Abbott is an even poorer fit because he belongs in neither wing of the Liberals’ broad church. The pro-business party leader who wants to lift business taxes, the small-government man who wants to hand out billions as part of climate change programs, the centralist who wants to devolve health control to local hospitals but take over health funding, Abbott is a walking ideological contradiction, still firmly at home in Labor Right that provided his ideological schooling.
The electorate appears to have spent recent years in a deep funk, despite the economic boom and constant tax cuts. It turfed out John Howard despite historically strong economic performance, hailed Kevin Rudd as a new type of leader, then turned on him with a vengeance when it transpired he was an ordinary, flawed politician. Clearly they want something more from our current crop of politicians than they are getting, but quite what, no one knows.
The only politician now seen as genuinely standing for something is Malcolm Turnbull, purely on the basis that he wrecked his leadership supporting climate action — even if the reality was that the climate action he supported was Rudd’s ineffectual and costly CPRS.
Now Gillard has the same opportunity as Kevin Rudd had. It’s hard to see her losing to Tony Abbott, but even a comprehensive win won’t solve the problem that Labor is ideologically adrift. That’s Julia Gillard’s long-term challenge.
Why even bother calling an election? With a pandering to the wealthy and strong and a hardening to the vulnerable and vilified, there’s no real difference between Howard Redux and Howard Redhead. They may as well just merge and be done with it.
You do wish that they’d develop some kind of new or different policies based on any vision whatsoever for Australia’s future, rather than slavishly following the same old polling. Perhaps they could poll somewhere other than Ipswich and Peppermint Grove?
William of Occam, that great mediaeval philosopher and attributed inventor of “Occam’s razor” provides you with a simple explanation. Always look for the simplest proposition that fits the facts and that is the generally correct one.
The proposition that Labor’s predominant philosophy it is concerned with keeping its union mates’ snouts in the trough is the logical derivative of looking at the facts. All recent activity appears to be in accord with this objective. Of course the Liberal party is no better, all you need to do is substitute business mates for union mates in the proposition and the conclusion is virtual identical. However the troughs in this case are different.
The Labor trough is largely the aspiration to a cushy Parliamentary sinecure and access to a generous superannuation scheme. Business mates however seek their benefits in the dark and murky world outside of Parliamentary remuneration, and of course Labor politicians regularly cross into this territory. The number of Labor politicians becoming significantly wealthy after the time in politics is legendary.
Gillard and Swan, having gone along for over two years as supplicants to the power mad Rudd certainly have some way to go to re-engineer themselves to distance themselves from the consequence of Rudd’s penchant for bad policy, substantially derived from his insatiable ego and desire for control. He forgot the advice that one should never stand between a Labor backbencher and the trough. As soon as the risk of losing this benefit becaome obvious, Rudd was dead quicker than Julius Caesar. It is probable that Gillard, as a smiling assassain, has been planning this move for some time
Labor of course stands for looking after itself and any backflip is acceptable provided it does not detract from winning the next election. Gillard and Swan will backflip on the RSPT, somehow blaming Rudd for the disaster, and will continue to maintain a strong border control. They will do this by stepping over the pool of blood left by Rudd and distancing themselves from his period in office ASAP.
Unfortunately nobody is seriously questioning Gillard and Swan about their appalling record of complicity with Rudd in the “kitchen cabinet” being directly involved many of the failed policies including the RSPT and the BER. An early election, after the predictable backflip on the RSPT it is likely while the feminist frenzy is still strong and before this issue of their complicity in these policy failures can be seriously questioned.
I fear that Ms Gillard will quickly become a major disappointment. Although Rudd ‘lost his way’, I can’t discern any sign that Gillard has a way to lose. She has not ennunciated any vision for the future. So far everything is about sticking bandaids on the wounds Rudd left on the party. I voted Labour in the hope of real action on climate change – the weird thing is that we would probably have had more action if Howard had been re-elected. Gillard, despite her assurance that she will reprosecute the case for climate change, is simply continuing the delaying tactics that she urged on Rudd’s gang of four. If she waits for a concensus on climate change, then we can be sure nothing will come out of a Gillard government on this issue, and I have a strange feeling that that is what she really wants. Gillard seems to be an old-fashioned left wing, bread and butter, greenie-hating Labourite, whose core beliefs are all about workers rights, social welfare and not much else. I hope I’m proved wrong, but right now the Greens are looking pretty good.
There may be some in the parliamentary party who have lost their way in the morass of so called pragmatic politics but there are many in the Labor Party and Unions who remember all to well the Howard Government, and don’t want to go there ever again.
On Workchoices, see http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/Home/Campaigns/WorkChoices-Never-Again.aspx
On refugees and asylum seekers, witness the support for Labor for Refugees and the party members who voted with their feet at Rudd’s measures to deny refugees their rights. Gillard should note that exodus to the Greens.
On the budget – Howard maintained surpluses, but depleted the infrastructure and social fabric of this country. The GFC has had a good spin off in that the Rudd Government’s stimuli put money behind long needed projects.
The much maligned and unfairly portrayed unions are there to keep the bastards honest in the interests of the working people of this country. No Labor politician should get too comfortable on the green and red leather. They are there to represent the people who elected them, and should be held to account.
I see Gillard shifting to the left on population, not right. For those of us who take it seriously as an environmental issue that is certainly the case. Whether Gillard sees it that way or not is hard to say. People such as Bob Brown and Dick Smith are certainly calling for curbs on population growth.