A Political Life – And Kevin Rudd

Maxine McKew was an award-winning broadcast journalist, who the seat of Bennelong at the 2007 federal election, defeating John Howard and becoming only the second candidate to have beaten an Australian prime minister in his constituency seat. In government, Maxine McKew was Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. On losing her seat at the 2010 election, she became a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne. On Wednesday 21 November 2012, Maxine McKew addressed The Sydney Institute to discuss her recently published Tales from the Political Trenches.

 A POLITICAL LIFE – AND KEVIN RUDD

 MAXINE MCKEW

Good evening everyone and to Anne and Gerard, my thanks for this opportunity to once again address The Sydney Institute – an important temple of ideas – not the only one, but a critical one in this city. The contest of ideas, and its current substitute, the contest of fears, is the theme that runs through my book Tales from the Political Trenches.

 Tony Abbott very nearly made Labor a one term government at the last federal election on the back of a negative fearful campaign – stop the boats, end the waste etc… On my side of the political divide, as Tony Walker captured in a quote in the Australian Financial Review this past weekend, we’ve had,  “the class war, the gender war, and now, perhaps, the religious war”.

My favourite lines in my book have nothing to do with the events of June 2010 when a first term prime minister was removed, but are from a note sent to me, after my 2007 win in Bennelong, by the former Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Gerard Brennan. Sir Gerard gave me permission to reproduce his words. His note expressed the hope that with the political change at the end of 2007 that this would mark, as he said, “the dawn of a new age – an age in which Australia may again become a confident nation in which fear and negativity have no place”.

If there is disappointment in my book it’s because we are still waiting for that new age.

Here we are – a privileged people – in a country that is blessed in every way. A rich inheritance and a limitless future but for the most part our political class seems incapable of celebrating this. At a recent Melbourne conference, on how we strengthen our ties with India, time and again the Indian delegates would ask us – why are you Australians so neurotic? What have you got to be worried about? Perspective is everything.

In today’s Australia we seem stuck. We yell at each other and hence our public debate is more shrill than sane. No insult seems too extreme and success is measured in terms of minor tactical advantage. Our public discourse is crude and our politics feels thin. The powerful don’t want to be challenged. We’re still playing divide and rule, and the political class has an almost lordly contempt for views that don’t fit the neat script dictated by communications teams at five in the morning.

The great regret I have is for the opportunity that Labor has missed – the opportunity to lift, to inspire, and to say, “What’s the best we can be?” To look at the way Australia is changing and to speak to a new set of ambitions and challenges. Many would say that’s impossible in today’s conflict-driven media culture. Maybe. Or maybe we’ve just given up.

But I have absolutely no doubt that there is an appetite for genuine engagement. It’s the issue that comes up over and over as I attend events such as this, in the wake of my book’s release. And if you’ll forgive the outrageous boast – Tales from the Political Trenches is now no 2 on the Independent Book Sellers list and no 2 on Dymocks’ list – well ahead of Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies but behind Jamie Oliver’s 15 Minute Meals. So cooking before coups! But coups ahead of beheadings!

My point is this. The field is wide open for leadership that will leapfrog over the current banalities and give us something better. I’m hopeful that with the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of the Asian Century’s White Paper this gives us a chance – a chance to generate a sense of national purpose around a set of integrated policies. But this will only happen if there is sustained advocacy and a bit of imagination in making the case. It has to be more than a twenty-four wonder. A good idea on a Sunday afternoon.

In the concluding chapter of my book, I quote Rod Cameron, the founder of ANOP polling. He makes the point that Labor needs to combine the priorities of a progressive party with the values and aspirational outlook of suburban families and small business. He goes on to say:

 Labor needs to communicate a vision and inspiration to a sour and increasingly whinging electorate and needs leadership which can successfully translate national goals to individual relevance. This would restore a level of confidence to an electorate unnecessarily gloomy and despondent.

 Cameron argues for a lift “in the standard of public discourse and behaviour in order to reconnect with an electorate which is past cynicism and is now disdainful and openly disdainful of the political class. Above all, what’s needed is leadership that stands for something…anything – other than a platitude or slogan – something that combines values ideology and national priorities.”

Now you might have noticed Federal Labor has lifted off the mat, largely on the back of very effective and negative targeting of Tony Abbott. You could say this is sweet justice as Tony Abbott has brought his party to a winning position on the strength of an overwhelmingly negative stance against the Prime Minister and the government.

Depressingly I have no doubt both sides will continue in this vein. The personal attacks work as the slogans and insults reinforce existing voter discomfort with both leaders. So if you think the last federal election in 2010 was moronic, I’ve already got a really bad feeling about the coming one.

But I also have no doubt that voters want something more – at the very least, a national conversation that treats them like grown-ups. This is not just a fantasy on my part.

Ipsos Mackay’s social researcher Dr Rebecca Huntley has been consistently recording in her Mood/Mind surveys conducted across the country, both nostalgia for the high expectations generated by the 2007 campaign and concern about the lack of planning for the country’s future. And I note that Dr Huntley was quoted at the weekend making the point that Julia Gillard’s negative tactics against Tony Abbott could end up being self defeating. As she said:

 She has a limited time to talk to people and she deprives herself of space and oxygen to talk about the reasons why they should vote for the government, regardless of who the opposition leader is. It’s crucial to get people to re-engage in what the PM has to say. It’s not enough to target the Opposition Leader.

 So what do we need to talk about? First of all, there is the not insubstantial question of how we fund the federal Budget and pay for the things we need in a time of slower growth and reduced revenues. Consider the challenge highlighted by the mid-year review figures. We now have more taxation – the carbon tax and the mining tax – but our overall tax take is down from 25 per cent of GDP to 21 per cent of GDP.

Let’s look at just one of these issues – the Minerals Resource Rent Tax. As you know, this was the most potent issue that played itself out right up to the point when Rudd was removed from the leadership on 24 June 2010. As I highlight in my book, this issue could have been resolved differently had there been greater internal contestability around the design of the tax and a much lengthier period of consultation with all the relevant stakeholders, and in particular with the WA government.

But where are we today on this issue? Revenues from the revised MRRT will deliver $4 billion less than projected over the forward estimates. The big resource companies have no liabilities to date. State royalties are still in place, but then Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s original proposal was to get rid of them. Royalties are still being pushed up by the states, and the Commonwealth is required to rebate coal and iron ore producers against their MRRT liability. That reduces the net tax take from the resource companies to the Commonwealth. The corporate tax rate is still 30 per cent, not 25 per cent as Ken Henry originally proposed.

The key questions that arise – has this been worth doing? Can we call it tax reform? Certainly the Committee of Review of GST Distribution has made the point that in the long term the MRRT is “unsustainable.” The whole process has hardly been a model of careful considered policy-making and it’s left the business community feeling pretty jaundiced and unwilling to consider the whole question of repairing the tax base.

Certainly, there are some in the business community who feel that the Treasurer has contempt for the country’s wealth makers.

If the government’s goals around productivity enhancement, and investment in education, skills and infrastructure are to be met, and with major items such as the NDIS and the Gonski funding formula for schools on Labor’s agenda, then some difficult decisions will need to be taken about spending priorities and how we enhance the taxation mix.

Slogans and attack campaigns will not help us with the scale of the problem- solving that will be needed over the next few years. Federalism is creaking, precisely at the time when co-operation with the states has never been more important.

You can hear the frustration in Nick Greiner’s voice when he says – “The COAG process is bogged down. Everyone agrees between the different levels on the principle, and then literally within minutes of the agreement it breaks down into a puerile argument about who’s going to pay.” It was also no surprise to see Griffith’s University’s recent survey of Australian voter attitudes to how we are governed, which recorded declining confidence in our ability to achieve long term reform across jurisdictions.

Another area where we need a sensible grown up discussion concerns education.

I find it a truly depressing comment on the times that those individuals who put over a year’s effort into reporting on the importance of an equitable funding mix for our schools – David Gonski, Carmen Lawrence, Ken Boston and Kathryn Greiner – purely out of a sense of civic mindedness – have had to watch as Coalition members have attempted to turn the whole issue into yet another low rent argument about how many dollars might be taken off a few of our most privileged schools.

All the data tells us there is an unacceptable 2-3 year learning gap between our most privileged students and our most disadvantaged students. We also know that Labor’s substantial investment in low SES schools through National Partnership agreements with the states, has yielded results. Academic achievement is lifting. It’s patchy but discernible.

But the government has been too quiet about what is really a heroic story – principals and lead teachers in some of our poorest schools raising standards, boosting expectation, and demanding the best – from students, teachers and parents. Equally, I find it bewildering that the Labor government has left action on the Gonski report to the tail-end of the political cycle. It suggests a considerable gap between rhetoric and commitment.

The tardiness on Gonski is in marked contrast to the speedy embrace of Angus Houston’s review of asylum seeker policy back in August. Cabinet, the Labor caucus and the parliament dealt with all of that inside a week. An interesting set of priorities for the lucky country.

If the Asian White Paper is about anything, it’s about investment in our brain power. And that’s how I see it, an investment, not a cost. At some point mining revenues will diminish, and by then we will want to be sure that other parts of the economy are doing more of the heavy lifting. It’s  through investment in research in our top institutions that we will see the benefits of greater industrial diversification and economic transformation.

More of our universities are now recognised in the top Global Rankings – and this in turn is what attracts top talent to Australia and creates a virtuous circle that boosts research and innovation. But again consider a recent decision and how it runs counter to this goal.

Having finally won the argument in 2010 to have the infrastructure costs associated with university research funded on a co-contribution basis by the federal government, the recent Budget review reversed this decision. Nearly half a billion dollars was taken out of the universities SRE program, thus returning us to the world of stop/start short termism that has bedevilled research in this country. Not a smart decision. We’d be far better off with considered investment in education and research rather than bonuses. The $2 billion for the School Kids Bonus in the 2012 May Budget, is to my mind, just the kind of expense we can no longer afford. It adds to the entitlement mentality, it doesn’t win a vote, and it robs us of the productivity enhancing investment that we do need.

One other area where I think it’s time for a contest of ideas concerns foreign policy. Everyone seems to have a heart attack when Paul Keating makes a substantial speech and questions the status quo. But as you will know if you have read my book, certainly the first chapter, I enjoy Keating’s conversation and his thinking. And it’s because he is an intelligent provocateur.

Interestingly, Bob Carr responded somewhat sympathetically and agreed with the former prime minister that too often, our relationship with Indonesia has been consumed by issues of marginal significance. As Paul Keating sees it, Indonesia is out most important strategic partner and yet he laments the lack of maturity and sophistication in the relationship.

Certainly, I wonder if we fully appreciate the vibrancy and capacity of a country that has so recently and successfully embraced democratic norms. In his Keith Murdoch Oration in Melbourne last week, Paul Keating also declared that the era of Australia foreign policy activism has passed. I don’t agree with that. Australia’s inclusion and direct involvement in the evolution of the G20 and our recent win in gaining one of the rotating seats on the U.N. Security Council are evidence of successful and sustained advocacy in important international fora. Equally I’m all for maintaining the strongest possible engagement with the US through our historic alliance, but Keating is prompting us to think more about future decisions that will be in our foreign policy interests.

Yes, there will be questions concerning China and its sphere of influence. But, more important, what have we learnt from following America, as a willing partner, into  long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? We don’t even debate this. I doubt it was mentioned in the recent AusMin talks in Perth between Hilary Clinton and Bob Carr or between Stephen Smith and Leon Panetta. It seems to me, that if we are to have, what Paul Keating calls “an enlightened sense of self” then we need to analyse the recent past, and ask whether it was worth it?

And, under what circumstances would Australia once again invade countries far from our borders, where we become bogged down for more than a decade as in the case of Afghanistan, and where the outcome looks as problematic as ever. I think that’s worth debating. That’s a contest of ideas. But it’s unlikely to be something that features in the next election campaign.

I’ve made some harsh judgements in my book about my side of politics and it’s because I want Labor to be better. I want the country to be better. The Labor government is now at the five year mark and while there have been many legislative wins, most Australians would struggle to identify the key distinguishing features of Labor’s time in office. What is it that defines this period?

There’s barely a shred of bi-partisanship and very little unity across key constituent groups – business, trade unions and community groups. I compare this with the five year mark of the Hawke/Keating period in government – where in spite of a very difficult external environment, there was widespread understanding about the government’s central purpose – the liberalising of the economy and the maintenance of a targeted social safety net. John Howard, as leader of the Opposition, in the main, supported the government’s reformist agenda.

By contrast today, we see little agreement across the policy spectrum – whether it’s to do with the pricing of carbon, the taxation of our resources, equity in education or the broadband roll-out. We are in very different times and the nation is the poorer because our leaders seem to be incapable of finding at least some areas of common agreement – and of lifting the national spirit.

In describing my own motivation for making the switch from journalism to politics – from being a questioner to someone who wanted to work on the answers – I would emphasise this. I was never cynical about politics. As grim and dispiriting as the revelations from the current ICAC hearings in NSW are turning out to be, that’s still true. I retain a basic respect for the endeavour – most people are in politics for the right reasons.

Through many years of interviewing international and national figures I learnt to recognise what I admired in effective leaders – the call to service, the intellectual and physical effort the job requires, and those with the wit to know when to junk the conventional. This is how I describe some of the things I considered when I was deciding to make my own political run: This is from Page 51….

 My starting point was that the modern Australian success story had not just happened. It had been argued and fought over and knocked into shape by a generation of political players. The best of them had the boldness and the energy to re-imagine the country through an altered policy mix that boosted our competitiveness without over damage to the nation’s social fabric. This had largely been a Labor effort. It didn’t happen without pain. But it did happen, substantially without rancour and division, because at a critical point in time a group of senior journalists had the wit and the gravitas to analyse and explain the way Australia was changing. Paul Kelly, Max Walsh, Laurie Oakes, Kerry O’Brien and Michelle Grattan always kept the pressure on the political class, pinning them down on detail and exposing the inconsistencies, but at the heart of their work was an honesty about the need to promote a contestable but civic public discourse.

 I go on to say, that this was a big influence on me. But I also make the point that ”this now sounds arcane. Almost quaint. We now live with a media politics dynamic that is almost completely conflict-driven and seems to chew up everything in its path”.

George Megalogenis, the author of The Australian Moment, said recently that a politician is more likely to begin a chat with a journalist these days by saying, “How do you think we’re going?” By contrast Hawke and Keating would start a conversation by telling you where they were going. I still puzzle over all this. It’s not that Canberra lacks for intellectual firepower.

When I arrived as a newbie, at the end of 2007, I encountered no end of bright energetic committed people. But the prevailing media and political culture rewards banality and repetition and inhibits creativity and originality. The key performance indicators all seem to revolve around volume – announcements, doorstops, point scoring on Sky News and numbers of social media hits.

I’m finding that a lot of people are responding to the parts of my book where I describe what I call the command and control system of the communications teams – the message masters who are now far more powerful in the senior offices than the policy makers. And this is true for both sides of politics. Of course my friends have found no end of amusement in the fact that with a thirty year background in communications, as a new MP, I struggled with this operational mind-set.

I would also add that this seems to be accompanied by a high level of intolerance towards those who express any disquiet with this kind of governance.

A short while back when the head of the Business Council of Australia, Jennifer Westacott, lamented that too many political gatekeepers were getting in the way of effective ministerial performance, she found herself lambasted in an email from the PM’s office, which, surprise surprise, found its way onto the front page of The Australian. But this is an issue that won’t go away. And nor should it.

Terry Moran, former head of the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet and now President of the Institute of Public Administration, has also made the point that within ministerial offices, there is now a significant problem with accountability. Moran has said that the old conventions governing the roles of advisors no longer hold true and that there are now too few who actually possess a good grasp of the business of government such that it is commensurate with their responsibilities. No-one can anymore assume that advisors are an expression of the “persona” of their ministers.

This is a significant shift. As Moran says, it is a manner of operating that is crowding out mature policy debates and is corrosive of good government. If we think these are arcane arguments best left to seminars attended by senior civil servants, then, again, look no further than where Justice Ipp’s inquiries are leading – revelations of abuse of office because power was held by a controlling clique.

In conclusion, I want to put to bed once and for all, the view, held by a few, and only a few, that I have had some malign intent in writing this book. I write for the same reason as any other writer. To understand.

In taking the time to reflect back over my own professional experiences, and the period that marked the return of Labor to federal office at the end of 2007, what I have aimed to do is to put together a coherent readable explanation of some of the most dramatic political events of recent times. I went where the research took me. Over the past year, I’ve spent hours talking and recording the comments of former colleagues, staffers and in some cases bureaucrats.

It’s a complex story and deserving of something a little more nuanced than the fairy tale told by the head of the AWU and a few others. As a journalist I spent years interviewing prime ministers. In 2007, I beat one of the country’s outstanding political warriors, John Howard, in the seat that he had held for 33 years. Convention suggested that I could not pull it off.

But, three years later, I was witness to a brutal breach of convention when a first-term prime minister was removed – not because he was found guilty of any impropriety – but because he refused to let Labor’s powerbrokers – the people who feel they “own” the party – run his government. That’s what I call a story.

I reject, entirely, the ludicrous idea that there is only one eternal truth about why Rudd was removed and its the version told by those who moved against him. As I’ve said repeatedly since the publication of Tales from the Political Trenches winners get to write the first draft of history. But the vanquished also have their stories and they deserve to be heard.

My book has caused discomfort for some but it has been welcomed by others – and by many in the Australian Labor Party which is old enough and robust enough to withstand a fresh look at the exceptional events of 2010.