Peta Credlin: Labor oppositions have made themselves unelectable

Labor oppositions around Australia are all in trouble because they are paying too much attention to the green-left instead of their working class roots, Peta Credlin writes.

Wherever you look in Australia right now, oppositions are in trouble. Labor oppositions are in trouble because they’ve drifted to the green left and made themselves all but unelectable. And Liberal oppositions are in trouble because they’ve drifted to the soft centre and not given people enough reason to vote for them.

The whole political spectrum has moved to the left, with both sides of politics promising more spending, more regulating and more intrusion into ordinary citizens’ lives so that it’s not longer a contest between left and right but between less left and more left.

Partly, this is the pandemic, which has been tough on oppositions everywhere, because people are more-than-usually reluctant to change governments in the midst of a crisis. And in a crisis, the usual rules about government spending tend to go out the window for the duration.

Partly, it’s the contemporary ethos, which is disposed to fear of climate change and worry about identity issues.

Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Anthony Albanese. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gaye Gerard

And partly it’s due to the changing nature of political party membership. Labor’s branches are dominated by green-left activists rather than working people who want to better themselves; while Liberal branches have become more influenced by factions usually mobilised by political staffers or lobbyists.

But while the political class has migrated leftwards, the public hasn’t necessarily followed. Both the federal elections dominated by climate change, for instance (2013 and 2019) were won by the Coalition.

Federal Labor did badly in Queensland, for instance, when the Greens made the running against the Adani mine; but state Labor did well earlier this year with a pro-mining stance.

The federal Coalition performed strongly in Western Australia campaigning against Labor’s 50 per cent renewable energy target, but the state Liberals have just been wiped out promising to close all coal-fired power stations by 2025.

In last weekend’s Upper Hunter by-election in NSW, not only did more than 80 per cent of the vote go to candidates who said they were in favour of coal-mining, but Labor managed scarcely 20 per cent of the primary vote, mostly because it couldn’t decide whether it was for or against the new Hunter Valley gas-fired power station that the federal government has just announced to keep the lights on and power prices down.

Dave Layzell (right) won the NSW Upper Hunter by-election. Pictured with NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro (left). Picture: David Swift

Mind you, as soon as the by-election was safely out of the way, the NSW Coalition government announced a massive new commitment to renewable energy, so neither big party’s commitment to fossil fuels can be taken for granted.

But as the by-election made clear, it’s Labor that currently has the bigger problem with blue-collar workers.

On Friday, after a week of public bloodletting, the NSW Labor leader belatedly announced that she was stepping down for the good of the party. Despite plenty of opportunities, Jodi McKay hadn’t laid a glove on Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Yes, she’d gone through the motions of an opposition leader, attacking the government over just about everything, but without ever establishing herself as a strong and distinctive political personality.

To succeed in public life you’ve got to have a brand, and to the extent that McKay had one it was brand BLAND. A political brand doesn’t have to be flashy – look at Berejiklian, who’s a masterclass in understatement – but it’s got to build your character or personality with the electorate, and it’s got to cut through. Sure, McKay was against the Berejiklian government. So what? Oppositions always are.

But what was she FOR? Indeed, what are most politicians “for” these days, other than winning? But in an era when no one stands for much, incumbency is a bigger advantage than usual.

Jodi McKay stepped down as leader of the NSW Labor Party. Picture: John Grainger

The likely new leader, Chris Minns will be up against it, because the Berejiklian government is widely credited as the best in the country.

It’s kept Covid under control without panicky lockdowns at the first sign of an outbreak; it’s run public schools and public hospitals tolerably well; and it’s cracked on with the infrastructure that Sydney badly needed after sixteen years of Labor neglect.

Although somewhat masked by incumbency, right across the country, not just in NSW, Labor’s problem is far deeper than who leads them. It’s what moves them. What – and who – does Labor stand for, these days? Is it climate change and identity politics; or is it better services and more jobs?

And, as Upper Hunter showed, you can’t square the circle by talking about green jobs, because the people who depend on coal mines for their livelihoods are not mugs. They know that there are no long-term jobs in solar panels and windmills that are imported from China.

So Minns just might make a difference, because as well as a qualification from Princeton University, he’s also spent time as a firefighter – amidst all the former union officials and political staffers, he’s one of the few senior Labor figures these days to have had a real job. To make it, though, he’s going to have to persuade all the truck drivers, shop assistants, sales reps and tradies living in outer-metropolitan and regional seats that he “gets” the businesses they work in; that he respects their aspirations to work hard and get ahead and he won’t put politically correct virtue-signalling ahead of their jobs and families.

In other words, he has to sound a lot less like Anthony Albanese and a lot more like Joel Fitzgibbon.

Right now, at least where the Liberals are in office, the alternative is the green left; and Liberal governments can be as progressive as they like because the alternative would always be worse.

A Labor Party that returned to its working-class roots and paid less attention to the green-left dominating their inner-city branches would turn elections into more of a contest for the outer-metropolitan and regional seats where elections are won and lost.

In the long run, a Labor Party campaigning closer to the centre would nudge the Liberals back to the right – and that could be as good for the Liberals as it would be for Labor.

Shifting the whole political spectrum closer to the sensible centre is what Australia needs.

* Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm