This is not much short of a total disaster for Federal Labor, which less than a year ago was contemplating a 100-seat representation in the House of Representatives. Rarely has a party so comprehensively and swiftly obliterated a huge electoral advantage. The switch to Julia Gillard has failed to secure victory, and there’s a real chance Labor will, as Daryl Melham predicted to Bob Hawke months ago, have burnt through two leaders in a short space of time.
There is much blame to go around, and go around it will. The powerbrokers who replaced Rudd with Gillard must now face the consequences of their actions; the best that Mark Arbib, Karl Bitar, Bill Shorten, Don Farrell and David Feeney – and extra-parliamentary figures like Paul Howes – can say is that they didn’t lose outright, which they believed they were sure to under Kevin Rudd. But the thoroughly inept conduct of the Labor campaign suggests that if Rudd was the problem, he wasn’t the whole story, not by a long stretch. Labor kicked off the campaign with a 10-point lead, according to some polls.
Gillard’s own performance, noticeably lacking in the “cut-through” which has hitherto been the most significant characteristic of her political persona, must bear some responsibility. The perception — partly fed by her confected “real Julia” break-out, and partly by her own demeanour — is that she allowed her campaign managers to impose on her a formulaic presidential campaign style that cut her off from voters.
If true, this played directly against Gillard’s strength, which is direct engagement with voters and a feisty political persona that had proven extraordinarily popular with voters until her elevation.
And Kevin Rudd, who spurned the opportunity to inflict a double dissolution election on the Coalition on climate change in favour of, ultimately, refusing to face the great moral challenge of our time, must carry the can for a disastrous inability to work out how to respond to Tony Abbott’s relentless negativity.
But this loss – and it can surely be described in no other way – is also a last victory from beyond the political grave for John Howard. Howard so damaged Labor during his years in power, inflicted such psychological damage on Labor, that they have given the impression for most of the last three years of having a sort of collegial Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, characterized by nervousness, a tendency to jump at their own shadow, and second-guess how their opponents could outsmart them.
Labor never outgrew the mindset of opposition, never realized what was needed to lead the nation, because it remained – and remains – deeply scarred by its experience during the Howard years. Labor is a timid, lackluster version of the party of old, and even if it had been returned to power – as it might yet be by the Independents – it appears too timid to be able to exercise genuine leadership, preoccupied as it is with how its opponents might exploit it.
The best long-term result for Labor would be defeat. If it clings to power, the purge of apparatchiks and inept political operators that is necessary for a competent, purposeful political entity to re-emerge will not take place. The same outfit that lost this election will go to the next, and there is no reason that voters will like it any more than they did yesterday. It’s not certain that defeat will result in such a purge either — the main perpetrators are safe in their Senate eyrie. But it will drive home to the Labor Caucus just how badly they have been led.
Not really. Rudd was medically sick but because it was a gall bladder digestion problem which can be notoriously cryptic he didn’t manage it properly, suffered mood swings, anger management issues.
He had to be replaced in the big job for his own health. Perhaps he has got the cure now. I politely asked David Marr was he surprised about the gall bladder thing last Friday night at a book launch and he was. Said his old mum had the old fashioned operation – far more invasive, so he knows a bit about the topic.
If so given Rudd’s experience and smarts that’s all to the good. Hemay be an asset again one day. Gillard remains as smart as ever even if her election night speech giggles at the start had a touch of the Russel Rees’s about it (fronting 4 Corners in awe of the power of the Black Saturday fire, when a funereal tone was far far more appropriate).
Actually it is that giggle that may yet come back to haunt her as near worst political judgments she has made, where her instincts are usually so good with the oratory. In truth it was a time for strength and and earnest concern at the damage not a look at me moment.
Oh on the gallbladder thing – it can be fatal if it ruptures, hence the snip.
Sure, clear out the ALP apparatchiks, but you need someone to replace them. Someone has to do the work.
That seems a big challenge for the party now, to find people for whom politics isn’t their only life but who are able and willing to dedicate their life to politics.
I feel sorry for the ‘faceless men’. They are putting in without the glory, only the blame. I disagree with their values, but acknowledge their passion. The left could do with some more of that.
The problem we have is that the public and the media demand big policies, dramatic action, otherwise government is “timid” and “doesn’t stand for anything”.
But if things are generally going ok, and they mostly are at the moment (apart from climate change), where do the big policies and dramatic action come from?
What exactly are/were Labor supposed to have been championing? I have yet to hear anyone say. The Greens/Left always say Labor should be championing workers’ rights and the environment, but the environment is obviously the Greens platform, and most people seem reasonably comfortable with the current state of play of workers’ rights vs workplace flexibility.
There are lots of little things – micro economic policies, modest social reforms etc – and the government has been doing exactly these things, but they’re not big enough for the commentators, and hence not big enough for the punters.
The only thing that will reengage/reinvigorate politics will be when things go so far off the rails that the need for dramatic action is obvious. ie politics in this country now requires a serious crisis or threat in order to mobilize political action. It doesn’t seem possible to have steady-as-she-goes political management of the small stuff, even though that is exactly what we want when there isn’t a disaster looming.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
BK you are on to something here.
There are a number of major psychological issues involved in the whole mess for labour a mess which defies understanding till one superimposes a potent theory like the one your genius diagnoses – the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – “last three years of having a sort of collegial Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, characterized by nervousness, a tendency to jump at their own shadow, and second-guess how their opponents could outsmart them.”
I was detecting another psychological phenomenon also (or likely more than one), one which would have been a little toxic when sitting alongside yours and one that is very humanly common and commonly engaged in with deep denial before during and after especially by powerbrokers and apparatchiks bought on when that somebody dares to be far too popular, especially innocently and when they can’t take all the credit for it.
Hidden and extraordinary toxicity is so underestimated so often. Smart people can’t conceive the presence of extreme toxicity when it’s clear that its presence would actually harm the perpetrators also. Psychology tells us that idea has no protective or defensive power.