Joe Hildebrand: Labor’s worst of all possible worlds

Labor is making a massive mistake in NSW, one it’s not making anywhere else in the polls. And it could be about to cost it dearly at the polls.

OPINION

The Australian Labor Party should be riding high at the moment. It is well ahead in the federal opinion polls, its premiers in Western Australia and Queensland are sitting on landslide majorities and even in deepest darkest Victoria Dan Andrews remains stubbornly popular while his dysfunctional Liberal opponents tear themselves apart.

Meanwhile in New South Wales, the once saintly figure of Gladys Berejiklian has been dragged back into the earthly mud, first by the state’s covid crisis and now by new concerns over her former relationship with Daryl Maguire, a bloke as close to an Australian Arthur Daley as we could ever hope to produce.

But instead the party has spent the past week with exasperated arms in the air, echoing the age old lament of Mother Superior: How do you solve a problem like Kristina?

Like the restive Maria in The Sound of Music, one-time NSW Premier and now Senator Kristina Keneally has never sat easily in any of the institutions that housed her.

Labor’s Kristina Keneally. It’s difficult to hear the concerns of the people of Cabramatta all the way from the northern beaches of Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

There is an apocryphal origin story in Labor circles about the Midwestern wunderkind’s first day on the job as an enthusiastic fresh-faced campaign volunteer working the phones during a NSW state election.

It is said that the veteran spin doctor Walt Secord overheard her accent and instantly demanded she never make or take another phone call again – this was the Australian Labor Party, not the American Labor Party.

The punchline was that Walt’s stern edict was delivered with his own unmissable North American accent, which is as Canadian as a nice day oot and about.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese with Western Sydney lawyer Tu Le at a Fowler fundraiser in June. Ms Le was set to contest the seat for Labor until Ms Keneally was parachuted in. Picture: Facebook

Kristina Keneally a conundrum

But the real moral of the tale is that even from the very beginning Kristina Keneally has always been something of a conundrum for Labor. She is talented, intelligent, articulate and telegenic but has never quite fit. The ALP is the most tribal of all political parties and Keneally is a chief without a tribe.

I say all this as someone who is very fond of both Keneally and the Labor Party but the truth is you cannot understand the now publicly prostrate preselection clusterf*ck in the federal seat of Fowler without knowing all the tidal forces that are belting the boats around.

The first fantasy to disabuse is the popular right-wing trope that Keneally is a ruthlessly ambitious Lady Macbeth who will stop at nothing yet has never won anything.

It is certainly true that Keneally has long been favoured by Labor powerbrokers and kingmakers — or queenmakers as the case may be — but more often than not they have handed her a hospital pass.

This was certainly true when she was made Premier of NSW after an embarrassing litany of leadership spills that became known nationally as “the NSW disease”. Labor was always a certainty to lose the 2011 state election and as each leader was knifed it only made the scale of that inevitable loss ever more gargantuan. Moses himself couldn’t have held back the tsunami.

A similar scenario in Queensland famously reduced the Labor government to a caucus that could fit around a kitchen table. Anna Bligh went to the Banking Association, Keneally went to Basketball Australia.

Some locals in Cabramatta haven’t heard of Ms Keneally. Picture: Adam Yip

Kamakazi Keneally

When she was wooed back to politics it was to contest the blue ribbon seat of Bennelong. This was of course classic Howard country, which the former PM only lost because of the political abomination that was WorkChoices.

Had it not been for that, John Howard may still have lost the election but would likely have retained his electorate. And so the celebrity candidate Maxine McKew won it just once for Labor in 2007 but the party has barely had a sniff of it before or since.

And so in both the most high profile contests of her career Keneally has hardly been given a parachute. If anything, she’s been given a kamikaze mission.

But dropping her into the southwestern Sydney seat of Fowler, the epicentre of a Labor heartland - which includes the major centres of Liverpool and Cabramatta - that is doing it even tougher now than all the tough times before, is the worst of all possible worlds.

For one thing, this accidental triumphal parade is really a demotion. The high-flying deputy senate leader simply didn’t have the numbers to get the top NSW senate spot and the subtler Deb O’Neill had the overwhelming support of the Right faction that Keneally also nominally belongs to. A lesson about quiet Australians probably applies here.

As a result, Keneally had to be found another seat in parliament pronto. And rightly so — she is a big name and a strong performer, although perhaps in the wrong portfolio.

And so the ALP did what it thought it had to and mowed down a promising grassroots candidate to sandbag a heavy hitter. This is a necessary evil for any political party but the fact that it has blown up on the front pages shows just how badly the move has gone down.

For one thing it’s an absurd look for a party whose left wing has become obsessed by race and gender to shaft a local ethnic woman, prospective candidate Tu Le, in favour of a northern beaches blow in. At least it proves how paper thin identity politics really is.

But it’s also crazy not to use a strong and well-known campaigner like Keneally to nail a marginal seat instead of cooling her heels in Labor heartland. If she’s too good to lose, why waste her?

The real tragedy here is that the ALP has two great assets in both Tu Le and Kristina Keneally but has somehow managed to squander both of them. The worst of all possible worlds.