Julia’s chance to fix Labor and pursue New Politics
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Post-election Prime Ministers are supposed to command great authority — having secured victory for their party, having delivered in the most basic political way possible to their MPs, they can command unquestioning loyalty from their troops. Julia Gillard, however, arrives as Prime Minister in her own right a diminished figure, one humbled by a disastrous campaign that nearly cost Labor office. The ferocious, highly-effective political performer who chewed up Parliamentary opponents, negotiated deals on contentious legislation in the Senate and wowed conservative commentators with her education ideas has been replaced with a faded Prime Ministerial copy, reduced to pleading that the “real Julia” was taking over her campaign. But the implacable logic of her position is that she must now use what’s left of her authority to challenge her colleagues not just to adjust to the politics of the knife-edge, where one slip could end in complete disaster, but to address the problems that emerged in Labor’s first term. As the campaign quickly demonstrated, not all of Labor’s problems can be labelled K Rudd PM. Indeed, judging by the comments of the independents, it appears only Rudd’s major reform legacy, the NBN, was what saved the Gillard Government from historical footnote material. While Gillard last week correctly lampooned (and she gives great lampoon — Gillard should lampoon more) the suggestion that the use of focus groups was confined to Labor, the problem for her party is that in fully embracing political professionalism it has made the tools of the trade the point of being in power. No doubt, as Gillard said, the Liberals spent a lot of money on focus groups to come up with their slogan. But the point was Tony Abbott could utter the slogan with some sort of plausibility, because voters know that the Liberals’ core values, at least in their Howard-era incarnation, encompass a punitive approach to asylum seekers, an association with budget surpluses and a reputation for competence, however ill-deserved. What are Labor’s core values? What are the instincts that animate Labor, beyond broad statements like fairness? What immediately springs to mind when you ask that question? Undoubtedly people have been lamenting the lack of core values in political parties since primitive MPs first crawled out of the primeval electoral slime, but modern Labor’s problem is that it has supplanted values with techniques, including the dreaded focus group, marginal seat campaigning and micro-policies to buy votes from carefully-targeted demographics. The policy rationale appears to come later, like the education rebate handouts to Family Tax Benefit A recipients before and during the campaign that were justified because of the transformative power of education and the fact that families were having trouble making ends meet. The problem is voters sense the disconnect, and instinctively find more credible politicians who are selling policies that appear to emerge with their core values, rather than having been shoehorned into them. This is one of the reasons why politicians love trying to fulfill election commitments, because the rationale of keeping faith with voters looks like an authentic narrative to help drive policy-making and implementation, even if you don’t have any innate sense of why you made the commitments in the first place. All this is also a problem for the Liberal Party, but Labor is the major party most advanced down the path of professionalisation, and accordingly must deal with its attendant problems. Gillard will therefore benefit from the overhaul of her government’s agenda that has been undertaken by the independents and the Greens. Suddenly she has a range of, in some cases quite exciting, political reforms to put in place and a range of major policy issues, including a tax review (!) and establishing the case for a carbon price. Much of this agenda isn’t her own, but she’s signed onto it, and can sell it as part of a “New Politics” agenda that, if cannily deployed, might reap electoral benefits from voters who sat through the last election with ill-disguised hostility to the politics-as-usual on display from the major parties. That sullen mood of discontent in the electorate could yet be tapped by a smart leader — although it will be rather akin to playing with fire. But that should be happening in parallel with a serious internal attempt to define clearly what Labor wants to achieve in power and acquire the skills — evidently lost in recent years — of selling policies because they reflect your core values, rather than because they rated well with 50 focus group members from Bankstown. In 2007, Kevin Rudd was handed an opportunity to use his unquestioned authority, enormous popularity and the level of popular engagement generated by his campaign to craft an enduring and effective progressive political agenda. He was unable to use two years of ridiculously high popularity to manufacture a real identity as Prime Minister and when his political persona came under pressure, it fell apart rapidly. Now Gillard has been handed another chance, albeit with far more conditions, to do the same. While delivering the program agreed with the independents and the Greens, she has to force Labor to sort itself out. If she can’t, Labor is unlikely win the next election and there’ll be no point if it did. |
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9 Comments
BK you might do us all a favour and suggest to former premier Beattie, next time you are in his company, he would do the country a service by shutting his big yapper. He adds nothing to the debate and is starting to sound like a blow hard know it all. He would do well to remember he didn’t leave his job as premier covered in glory.
The constant diatribe by media commentators against Kevin Rudd as PM is starting to pall. It is such a mistaken reading of his tenure that during his term he accomplished so much in the mere 2 1/2 years to try and get Australia back some of its pride, dignity and self concepts that were squandered, lost and fouled during the Howard years.
Kevin Rudd was a hard working, intelligent, bilingual, idealist who was delving into the realms of that lost talent called ‘Statesmanship’.
The media seemed to play to the lowest common…person…it is as though Australians do NOT like hard working people after all. They want ‘the common man’ not ‘a man for all seasons’ which was Kevin’s bent.
To say he did not have a ‘real identity’ as PM is mistaken. I agree the ‘manufacturing’ of such was a failure as he did not need to do that..he was way far too busy fixing all that was lost during the stagey and rotting attitudes that Howard made the status quo.
He DID have a real identity. It was one where the rest of the country was getting on with working and redefining their national identity. The feeling of palpable relief when Rudd took over was evident even in the little village where I reside.
Kevin was finally catching us up with the rest of the world…on human rights, climate change (why blame him for Copenhagen AND the blocking in the Senate??), Education ( bringing it up to the 21st century), recognising the crumbling infrustructure and putting in place the need on several levels to get up to speed, the GFC, the need for more compassion to the disabled and needy, support for science, health and on and on.
We finally had a true leader. One who was going to raise us up, not pull us down to the redneck level. One who was going to show us what was possible not leave us to wallow in the lower echelons of the Hanson thinkers.
So I am tired of all this ‘blame Kevin’ and lets dump on him.
We are now back to square one and we are dragging back down to the talk back callers who think their knee jerk reactions make us a better nation.
They don’t but maybe this is what we deserve or at the very least, what we really are.
How pathetically sad is that!!!
(BTW I used to think Kevin was too ‘right wing’ for me..but learnt when he became PM just what respect he commanded)
The Independents and Greens have shown Labor, and hopefully Gillard, what thteir core values should be. They better take the hint.
whoever was responsible ,and in the end its got to be Kev,for the lack
of political nous involved in not dissolving the parliaments the minute
the c0alition reversed on the CPRS and elected Abbott is responsible for
the predicament that the ALP finds itself now in.
Its not often that the deposed leader of the opposition crosses the floor
to vote with the government on an issue that has been described as the
greatest moral test confronting the nation.
What a snafu….
Bernard, you ask what are Labor’s core values. The National Platform decided by National Conference of the Party in 2009 is built on Labor’s core values. Go to http://www.alp.org.au/australian-labor/Our-Platform/
Trouble is do the politicians even read it, much less adhere to the platform?
Gillard had her chance when she took over the leadership and she fluffed it. As I expected she would, given her track record in the education and IR portfolios. She has another chance, now, to get it right, but I don’t think she has it in her.
She looks, so far, like the very embodiment of all that is wrong with the Labor party. Poll driven and policy free. Amoral, without belief in anything except power for its own sake. Maybe she will goaded by the independents and the greens into making a few positive choices based upon policy (their’s, not her’s). Maybe that will win her another election.
I keep hoping for better from her. But I don’t expect it. And so far she has confirmed my expectations.
I predict that, one day, we will have a Rudd versus Turnbull election, with both having learned from their mistakes. And, maybe, we will get discussions of policy and competing visions.
I expected little from Krudd and was not disabused. I expected so much from Gillard and was sickened & saddened.
Using the nomenclature of the right wingers, AR, does not give much credence to your simplistic attitude.
@Allie Ann, posted Sunday, 12 September 2010 at 11:03 am:
Your over-the-top defence of Kevin Rudd (above) was sufficiently one eyed to warrant a response. The subsequent offering adds nothing to alter this observation.
Kevin was the embodiment of promise and honesty, a leader who brought realistic promise of politics and policies. Many Australians were greatly disturbed to find that his bureaucratic nature, micro-management and intervention in his Ministers’ portfolios resulted in roadblocks and errors.
Worse, the ALP lost thier ability to communicate as Rudd and his staff blurred and stymied policy.
His response, to promise that he would “work still harder”, was proof, if ever proof was required, that he simply didn’t get it. More sleep, not less, was required, supported by more delegation and trust, not by denial of the Cabinet’s role by the now famous “Gang of Four”.
Rudd was a promise that failed to be delivered. Labor lost its way and paid a heavy price at the ballot box.
The future must be founded on a recognition that change is needed, not return to Ruddism and all that blew so many voters away.
BTW, the Libs could read the above couple of paragraphs, change a few names, and find a message for themselves. Abbott has always been a loose canon and always will remain so. The Libs have the same need for change of personnel and of processes.
The current knife-edge parliament offers just the motivation and opportunity for both parties to ruthlessly get their parties in order.
Why did I not mention Greens or Nationals? Because, in the long run, they will probably cease to be king-makers within an election or two.