David King writes: One of the answers to the failure of the Labor party to win the recent election as covered by Guy Rundle was to be found in the following article by Bernard Keane. The last two decades has seen Labor wedged by the LNP and business groups to reduce union rights, strikes and bargaining power. I wonder why Labor didn’t include policies to address loss of union power, workers’ rights and wage justice in their election policies. Are they more concerned with appeasing business than looking after their voter base? The review process failed to discuss their tendency to be wedged on many policy areas and their lack of courage for presenting policies that might cop some criticism, for example raising the Newstart allowance.
Amy Huva writes: The ALP’s failure at the last election is really not that complicated. They had an opportunity to offer something different and instead tried to split the difference, giving us a choice between two different versions of stale white bread for PM. They then chose their next leader — another boring old white man in a suit who may have won a faction, but who’s name I’ll struggle to recall. I wish that the ALP would grow a spine and offer the electorate something to actually vote for. Fight for workers rights, take on the billionaire class, tell the truth about climate change and give us a green new deal. If we don’t act on climate, the economy will collapse before I retire. Labor can either take that challenge on, or become even more irrelevant. It’s their choice.
Edward Zakrzewski writes: Labor lost the election for reasons far simpler than those described by Mr Rundle. These were:
- Labor was destroyed on social media (death tax, retirement tax, etc)
- The News Corp behemoth was against them
- The Academy Award performance by Morrison which convinced many people he is an ordinary bloke
- Bill Shorten has an unfortunate speaking manner
- Bob Brown’s caravan didn’t help.
These simple things are what sways the many people who decide their vote while standing in the booth.
Mark Dunstone writes: Compare this to the Coalition in government (as opposed to running an election campaign). We don’t have a working cabinet. Ministers don’t trust the public service, which is anyway now effectively dysfunctional through years of wrecking. We have policy advice and development through a few commercial consultants and mining and other peak (really gutter) corporate lobby groups. Policy and government are now by sequential thought bubbles. As voters we should have in mind how they will govern not how they perform and spin lies in election campaigns. Same as an employer should assess a potential job applicant on how they’ll perform in the job, not whether they aced the interview with spin. Perhaps I’ve got much to learn from the PM that spin and appearance is much more important than substance.
Send your comments, corrections, clarifications and cock-ups to boss@crikey.com.au. We reserve the right to edit comments for length and clarity. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication.
Excellent contributions by all respondents.
I draw particular attention to point 4 of Mr Zakrzewski, Shortens unfortunate speaking manner. Shorten pronounces ‘th’ as a ‘v’, in particular the word ‘with’ comes out as ‘wiv’. This makes him sound like someone who has spent his formative years in a down town game parlour. The Liberals demonstrated the value candidate presentation with the ‘make over’ (eyebrows, teeth and glasses) of John Howard prior to his first stint as PM. Surely Labor should have seen and corrected this unfortunate shortcoming in Shorten.
Labor went into the may election like the melbourne cup favourite with a very fat jockey, they had the horse to win but not the jockey, shorten got the leadership originally by stabbing two good prime ministers in the back for pure personal ambition and people did not trust him after that, he has the Elmer Fudd appearance that left him looking awkward and uninspiring and he had a shadow treasurer that clearly is in the wrong party and exhibits hubris and arrogance that`s expected from the liberal party but not tolerated by labor supporters and to top it off they took that stupid franking credits policy right up to the election even tho from day one it was clear they themselves did not understand it and it gave the Libs a huge bat to flog them with right up to election day, as soon as that policy was announced without caps or grandfathering and Bowen told frightened oldies “IF YOU DONT LIKE IT, DONT VOTE FOR US” I knew they were gone and justifiably so, the only good thing to come from that election is the fact that Morrison, like Keating in 1993 thought he had won the election, of course he did`nt, labor lost it and there is a very big difference come next election because Scomo`s arrogance kicked straight in and he went on a right wing rampage, his trip to Hawaii was the complete tipping point and he wont recover from it, the bad thing is Murdoch will now remove him and install his favourite Peter Dutton at the first opportunity and well before the next election.