LABOR AFTER THE 2019 FEDERAL ELECTION – WHERE TO NEXT?

Michael Sexton SC is the NSW Solicitor General and author of The Great Crash: the short life and sudden death of the Whitlam Government. Brad Norington is Associate Editor at The Australian and has been writing about national and international politics over two decades. He was also The Australian’s Washington Correspondent during the Obama presidency. On Monday 24 June 2019, following Labor’s unanticipated loss at the 18 May federal election, Michael Sexton joined Brad Norington to offer some perspectives on where Labor might go next.

LABOR AFTER THE 2019 FEDERAL ELECTION – WHERE TO NEXT?

MICHAEL SEXTON

I am slightly embarrassed to be speaking on this subject tonight because quite a few of the things I have written in recent times have been about the long term problems of the Liberal Party. But just let me mention two of those because I think they are still relevant to what we’re going to talk about tonight as well as to Liberal Party.

One was to say that Liberals are essentially a centre party, not a centre right party, facing a centre left electorate. I don’t mean that the electorate thinks in ideological terms but it is largely in favour of increased government spending and tolerant of government regulation.

I did make one caveat in some of these pieces, however, that, although the electorate was in favour of increased government spending, it was not in favour of any taxation to pay for it. That perhaps is reflected in the election result as Brad has already noted.

I also mentioned in these pieces that the Liberals had lost control of many public and many private institutions in Australia, including most of the media, universities and schools, the boards of many major companies. This could be a long term problem, perhaps a medium term problem, for the Liberals.

One thing to remember, however, about the election result is that it was very close, just one seat. No change really from the last parliament. And it was almost thrown to the independents which would have probably presented a problem for the Liberals as it did in that Gillard period.

With this result, there is no great distance to be covered for Labor to win the next election.

 And the government will be seeking a fourth term. So, it is not really anything like a disaster for Labor. It was a shock because both Labor and, I think, the Liberals expected Labor to win.

If you look around the country, just on that note, New South Wales was decided by one seat; in South Australia the Liberals have a two-seat majority; in Tasmania they do not have a majority any longer – they are still in government but they govern with the vote of an independent speaker who was in the Liberal Party but has abandoned it. In Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, Labor has comfortable majorities and it also governs in the ACT and the Northern Territory. On the Labor side, this is not a case for alarm and despair. It was, of course, very surprised, and so were most people, by the election result.

Now to look at some of Labor’s problems aside from the Liberals’ problems. I was a delegate to the Labor national conferences in 1986, 1988 and 1991 and it was a very different atmosphere from today. There was not the same discrepancy between branch members on the one hand, and the electorate on the other.

That gap has widened significantly since that time which is a problem in terms of the formulation of policies that are likely to appeal to the electorate.

Arguably, it has been convenient for Labor to have, in a sense, part of its vote warehoused in the Greens because, for electoral purposes, those two can be counted together. But in the same way that there’s a discrepancy between the rank and file in the Labor Party and the electorate, there is a discrepancy between the Greens and most of the electorate. The Greens have had some impact over that period of time on the formulation of Labor’s policies.

I talked about that period back in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. If one compares the composition of Labor parliamentarians then and now you will see some substantial differences. If you think of some of those ministers in the Hawke and Keating governments – Bill Hayden, Neal Blewett, Peter Walsh, Hawke himself – you don’t see at the moment those kinds of people in the parliament.

There is a domination by former trade union officials and staffers which largely means people who started in their teens on this kind of career and have not had any real experience of other work or exposure to the community. The Liberals have somewhat taken the same path but not to the same extent. This is another disconnect if you like with the electorate. It is a reason that such members of parliament are likely to find it more difficult to find policies that are appealing to the electorate. They don’t have any real affinity with ordinary members of the community because of the sorts of limited careers that they have had.

In these circumstances, what is the future likely to be for Mr Albanese? In electoral terms, Labor has very little ground to make up at the next federal poll. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they will make it up.

 But they are certainly not starting from a difficult position. Who knows what, in three years, the political landscape will be like?

The government may be re-elected but it is difficult to make any kinds of predictions at this time. Mr Albanese is very popular in the inner west of Sydney – where I live! How he will appeal to the outer suburbs of Sydney and Perth remains to be seen. Mr Shorten’s unpopularity is now somewhat exaggerated. He was, perhaps, never a hugely appealing character in political terms but I don’t think he was as unelectable as many people now seem to think was the case.

But, if governments lose elections rather than oppositions win them, there is going to be a delicate balance for Labor. It is a balance for any Opposition between constant negativity – which I don’t think is appealing to the electorate – and policies which are too detailed and have their own problems. If Mr Albanese’s polls are not good in 12 or 18 months, it’s possible that he may face a challenge, for example, from Ms Plibersek

who is a rather appealing character in many ways.

I will just say, lastly, that I would also think Labor should move quietly on some of those political correctness issues. Given what we have seen in Britain and the US, and to some extent in Australia, the capture of a lot of public and private institutions by the forces of political correctness leaves, in some ways, almost the only way for people to protest about this is in the privacy of the ballot box, where nobody can criticise them for what they have done because nobody knows what they have done. That would be something Labor could probably take note of over this coming period of time.