Tim Blair: Anthony Albanese must channel legendary PM to make his mark on ALP leadership
If Anthony Albanese learns from history and ditches Labor’s election-wrecking climate obsession, he may become a leader equal to one of the ALP’s finest, writes Tim Blair.
Opinion
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If you don’t like Labor’s climate policies, just wait a few months. They’re bound to change.
They’ve been changing since 2007, when Kevin Rudd identified global warming as “the great moral challenge” of our generation.
Labor threw him out just three years later. Rudd as Prime Minister was a challenge too great even for his own Labor colleagues.
Replacement PM Julia Gillard’s flexible climate policies doomed her from the start. Just days before the 2010 election, Gillard famously declared there would be “no carbon tax” under her leadership.
To a certain extent, Gillard kept that promise.
It’s just that Labor outsourced leadership and climate policy to the Greens, with whom Labor briefly formed a ruinous partnership.
“It was the Greens who put this on the table after the election,” then-Greens leader Christine Milne said in 2011, referring to the carbon tax.
“It’s part of our agreement with the Prime Minister.”
Labor was noticeably quiet on climate change in 2016. Running against PM Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten found other issues more compelling.
So did voters, as results showed.
Barely half a per cent of Shorten’s campaign launch speech that year covered climate concerns, and even then only in generalities (“we want real action on climate change”, “we choose renewable energy”).
It almost worked. Shorten missed out by a single seat, leading to Turnbull’s celebrated Night of the Long Sulk and the saddest victory speech in Australian political history.
Labor should have learned from that outcome. Instead, Shorten in 2019 went full rapture. “Ignoring climate change is simply not an answer,” the then-Labor leader declared.
But it might be if the question is: “How do we win a federal election?”
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“Labor is committed to reducing Australia’s [carbon dioxide] pollution by 45 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero pollution by 2050,” Shorten continued.
His campaign speech that year was loaded with climate talk, up to 6.6 per cent from .5 in the previous campaign.
“I promise all of those Australians who want action on climate change, and I promise the young people in particular, all Australians: Labor will stand its ground,” Shorten said.
“No retreat on real action on climate change.”
Shorten dismissed as “dumb” any questions about the cost of his climate promises and otherwise carried on like Greta Thunberg with slightly fewer personality disorders.
And Labor lost big time.
A funny thing happened recently to Labor’s commitment to a 45 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. It’s completely disappeared from the party’s draft policy platform.
The ground upon which Labor stands has shifted once more. A climate change retreat is underway.
“It’s all about the jobs after COVID. It’s all about the jobs,” Shorten, now the former leader, told Nine this month. “In all seriousness, that’s what I think.”
Current Labor leader Anthony Albanese would be wise to adopt “it’s all about the jobs” as a party directive. He’d find a receptive audience among voters who’d appreciate a viable non-Coalition option.
The suburbs and regions are loaded with swing voters who no longer swing because Labor isn’t swingworthy. That’s why Labor’s primary vote in 2019 looked like Joe Biden’s score in a Sudoku tournament.
Those same voters are increasingly wary of squishy Libs who agree with the global climate agenda. If Albanese wants to become a John Curtin figure rather than bring down the curtains on Labor, he’ll find that path in pro-jobs, pro-manufacturing policies.
Of course, that will mean surrendering the inner-city vote to the Greens. But so what? The Liberals don’t win inner-city seats, yet they keep winning elections.
Besides, on current trends our inner city areas are probably only a few years away from turning into our own versions of leftist-ransacked Portland, Oregon.
Smart residents should escape now while their houses can still be sold with intact windows and at least one floor that isn’t ablaze.
“Our world is on fire, the Liberals are pouring fuel on the flames and Labor is egging them on,” Greens leader Adam Bandt claims.
“Under Anthony Albanese, Labor risks becoming just as bad for the climate as the Liberals.”
Translation: Under Anthony Albanese, Labor risks becoming electable. Some within Labor remember what happened when their party last followed Greens instructions.
Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, among quite a few of his less-public colleagues, would prefer to win. Labor can do so by shunning the Greens and wedging the Coalition.
The coronavirus gives Labor some cover here. As Shorten put it: “It’s all about the jobs after COVID.”
Labor can justify throwing out all of its climate nonsense — not just the 2030 target, but everything — because the extreme demands of a post-COVID recovery demand it be so.
The Coalition’s enviro faction, and party heavyweights who give that faction credibility, would be absolutely stumped by a vote-scoring populist jobs-over-climate push by Labor.
They’d be blindsided. And, after 2022, they’d be gone.
Imagine a party founded on the ideals of working-class advancement actually committing itself to … working-class advancement.
It’s an idea so crazy that it might actually work.