This week I was practising my argument about a feeling that Albanese Labor has by now left it too late to retrieve its position before the next federal election is due. This was after it was revealed that the economy is on life support and that Labor’s best argument about being a superior economic manager was that its skills had avoided the recession we did not need. It was, however, after it became clear that Bill Shorten was of the same view.
“But it may not be a bad thing,” someone said. “Labor would be forced into minority government and might learn from that how to gain some policy courage, given that even the Teals are to the left of it on many issues, such as the environment, AUKUS, immigration and corruption in government. And, of course, it would be a splendid opportunity to get rid of the leader, who has probably already shown the best of what he has to offer.”
If any of the government share this complacency, they should be looking for their ambassadorships and government patronage now. From the moment Labor contemplates how it could operate in minority government, its cause is badly lost.
In this article I am writing about what I think is happening, not necessarily what I want to be happening. But it would be idle to pretend that most of Labor’s problems are not of its own making, that they turn more on what it hasn’t had the guts to do, and that Labor has probably gone past the time when it could correct its most serious mistakes. I cannot, for example, magically get the economy going again, or do much before the election that will affect consumer prices or interest rates. Different leadership, particularly at the prime minister and deputy prime minister level, could change our defence policies. We could stop medium- and short-term preparations for an unnecessary war with China at the behest of America and our captured national security establishment. But I work on the assumption that the party is determined on self-harm, in both national and political terms, and am focusing only on what, in the present situation, seems possible.
Labor has tested possible crossbench support to the limits
Labor does not have friends on the crossbenches to imagine that it could easily organise a friendly informal coalition, even if there are enough on the crossbench to be closer to Labor in policy opinion than the Coalition. It is simply not true that the crossbench has nowhere to go, or that it morally owes the Labor Party support because (in Labor’s view) Peter Dutton is worse on most of the points of difference. If Labor won’t differentiate or be different on crucial policies, what is the point of preferring them?
The crossbench lacks goodwill for many reasons. It sees, with some justice, that Labor has betrayed the nation on its minimal climate policies and its continuing support for the oil, gas and coal industries. Moderate Teals and the Greens are also angry about other policies they expected to be pushed with more fervour, and Anthony Albanese’s walking away from Indigenous affairs after the Voice debacle.
But the anger is also a measure of Albanese’s spiteful politics in the earliest days of government, over matters such as the staffing entitlements of Teals, the lack of any sense of partnership with legislation independents had championed long before Labor did, compromises over climate change and energy legislation and the ultimate insult, doing a dirty deal with Dutton to castrate the anti-corruption commission. The Albanese/Dutton NACC cannot be regarded as a kept campaign promise. It is now the cause of serious distrust, as with climate change policies: many do not even believe that the government’s inclinations are in the right direction.
Much of the electorate rightly regards the NACC as a dud by design from the start, with commissioners showing no taste, or as yet, no skills for their appointed task.
On the other side of politics, Dutton argues that the Teals, and most of the other independents are secretly Greens. In fact, most are from the Liberal side of politics and would once have comfortably belonged within the moderate and liberal faction of that party. They have been driven out by the party’s sharp swing to the right under Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton. All, or almost all, are better and more personable than the members they replaced – a realisation that makes even the once great white hope, Josh Frydenberg, hesitant to have another go. The key point of fracture between the Teals and the Dutton Liberals is that the party has moved further from the centre under Dutton and shown no inclination to woo back moderates. The key point of fracture, other than honesty and process in government administration, has been over inaction on climate change and it is doubtful if any short-term compromise is on the table.
Labor can’t beat the Teals, but Dutton can. So why is Albo so unhelpful to them?
Neither Labor nor the Greens could possibly win Teal constituencies, but Dutton could, particularly if he can make the election about national security and fear of aliens. It sometimes appears that Albanese is doing everything possible to help him, perhaps as part of some divinely appointed mission to save the two-party system. Some Teals are in trouble from electoral boundary changes, and Labor and the Coalition have done a typically tricky and dishonest deal to handicap the funding of independent candidates while leaving the major parties alone. Mainstream politicians pretending they support honesty, decency and fair play in the parliamentary system besmirch themselves by standing silent over the grubby conduct involved.
As things stand, it will be a miracle if the primary election issues are ones of Labor’s choosing, and even more of a miracle if Labor’s core constituencies could summon any enthusiasms for the party’s agenda, if any, or achievements, if they can remember any. That’s a function of the failure of Labor communicators to maintain a dialogue with the electorate or their supporters, highlighting their successes, and explaining how they fit into the grand scheme. Indeed, as the American presidential election shows, a good campaign can erase memories of how things really were for some fictionalised picture of how well the American economy and the American mood was under the Trump administration. Here, Labor has been in office long enough that it can no longer blame the Morrison government for anything wrong (because it should have fixed it by now) and many are so immersed in interest rates misery and cost of living problems that they are susceptible to being “helped to” remember that it was different at an earlier time.
Albanese, correctly, sees a long-term threat to Labor from the rise of the Greens and from its forging an effective presence on issues that once pre-occupied the old Labor Left, which scarcely exists any longer. (Albanese’s Left faction is propped up by the most conservative right-wing factions). The Greens are winning inner-suburban seats, even as they struggle in the outer suburbs and rural Australia, which are more fixed on bread-and-butter issues. Albanese’s tactic is to claim that the Greens have become extremists, whether over Israel and the Middle East, defence spending and defence orientation, and human rights. Some of it, particularly in relation to Israel, is reminiscent of kicking the communist can, if in a generally less sophisticated way. The Greens are also accused of being wildly impractical over some of their policy aims, such as over increasing the supply of public housing. But, increasingly, in public debate on such matters, Greens and other independents are making good points while ministers appear to be dissembling. How, after all, can Labor plead poverty when it has freely committed itself to more than half a trillion of dubious defence expenditure?
Nothing Labor has done would slow a back-to-Morrison-style government by Dutton
The attack on the Greens, and the effective attack on the Teals and other independents may not succeed in drawing votes to Labor. Rather, it draws attention to the very limited goals set by Albanese and his very modest achievements in meeting them. The crossbenchers serve as the reminder of the timidity and lack of policy courage over national issues troubling many Australians, and Albanese’s failure to articulate or reflect “Labor values” on issues such as action on climate change, nuclear-powered submarines, and subservience to the United States over China and Israel. It draws attention to Albanese’s frank funk about taking on Dutton over wedge issues and what Dutton calls “woke” issues.
Voters have also become aware that Labor has lost almost all of its reforming zeal. There’s its moral cowardice on the party’s institutional thrall to gambling interests and the liquor industry and big mainstream media. Even if Albanese now recognised the damage he has done to himself and the party and attempted a policy reversal, he would probably get little credit for bowing to overwhelming popular opinion. Nor has he added to his reputation among traditional Labor voters by making all policy hostage to Western Australian mining interests.
Of course, Australians are familiar with election campaigns at federal, state or local level, where parties denounce all other parties, and swear that they will, under no circumstances, form any sort of coalition with them if they are in a minority position. It’s mostly theatre, because after an election failing to produce a majority, the parties usually sit down and negotiate. Julia Gillard, for example, obtained the support of (mostly conservatively oriented) independents for minority government in 2010. No one did more to put the deal into effect than her leader of government business, Albanese.
Nothing the Albanese Government has done in power has made it less likely that that rorts of the type perpetrated by the Morrison Government could occur again. Indeed, Dutton could walk into office very comfortable and familiar with the public servants there – all ready to resume the functions asked of them before. The public service is entirely unreformed, and the public service commission has made a complete mess of disciplinary proceedings supposed to occur after the Robodebt debacles. The supposed new broom public service commissioner has, by exercise of his own discretion rather than requirement of law, decided that disciplinary proceedings against public servants should be kept entirely from public gaze. The commission’s performance, and the leadership of the service, resembles the attempt by the NACC to walk away from Robodebt.
Nor has it dealt effectively with large-scale fraud by Big Four partnership consultancies, which in any other jurisdiction other than Australia (such as the US, even under a Trump administration) would be exacting penalties in the billion-dollar range to be paid by all partners. No better system for causing transparency, accountability, honesty and honour among all partners than in holding all responsible for systematic ripping off the taxpayer. Instead, ministers, top public servants and even the police are looking for ways to punish a very few. All too many are compromised by old hopes and expectations of getting consulted by the very firms in the spotlight. Similarly, neither the Public Service Commission, nor the defence department, nor the prime minister, have done a thing about the shameful traffic by which hundreds of senior defence officers have gone to work for arms companies. Likewise with the way ministers and minders become lobbyists, mostly as rent-seekers prostituting their old access to parliamentary colleagues and knowledge of bureaucratic decision-makers for the profit of others.
A kicking is inevitable, but will it be kicked right out of power?
Not everyone yet sees the government as being of only medium competence and minimal will to change anything, other than by temporising responses to the crises that come up from time to time. There are able ministers, particularly in Labor’s strong sectors such as health, education and welfare. Fewer think it is yet thoroughly corrupted by complacency and incumbency. But the word heard everywhere is “disappointing”. It is seen as having failed to meet expectations. Of not seeming to know where it was going, nor of having a strategy for getting there intact. Or, if it has such a plan, or such a guidebook, of keeping it a state secret and failing to explain and re-explain what they are all about. Much of that is about the personality and leadership style of Albanese.
Whatever happens, Labor looks due for a kick in the pants. It seems doubtful that it can get away by warning that a Dutton Government would be worse. Perhaps, but if Labor doesn’t want to use the power and responsibility it has been given, what’s the point of giving it another go? And if it has no will to restore constitutional governance, or to punish maladministration, why shouldn’t the public regard the Morrison system as having got the tick from Albanese and his ministry? Naturally, there’s no telling how many will want to administer the kicking. But the more the party sets out to acclimatise the electorate to the view that a kicking is likely and only to be expected, the more people will feel themselves permissioned to join in the fun. It would not take a great swing to put the return of Mike Pezzullo on the agenda.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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