Labor’s loss was about their loss of traditional Labor values

JOBS, not stupidity, lost Labor voters last Saturday, and in turn they lost Labor the unlosable federal election

MORONS. Stupid individuals. Turds.

These are among the descriptions that have been dished out to the voters of Queensland since they swung their support behind the Coalition and delivered them an unlikely election victory on Saturday.

“It seems unfair that the morons outnumber the thinking people at election time,” Sydney Morning Herald cartoonist Cathy Wilcox tweeted on Saturday.

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“Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation,” wrote Robert Gotts in reply, quoting Carlo Cipolla’s laws of stupidity, sentiments Wilcox was happy to share.

“Well, Australia may be f**ked and the whole planet not far behind but I am at the best, most brilliant and cool wedding I have ever been to. So I shall just dance and get pissed and stick two rude fingers up at all the truculent turds who voted to turn backwards,” tweeted author and social commentator Jane Caro after one-too-many chardies on Saturday night.

As the Labor Party continues its post-mortem into how it lost the unlosable election, it might be worth paying attention to some of the commentary being dished up by some of its supporters.

For it’s this kind of attitude served up by inner-city elites towards decent, hard working people that is driving traditional Labor voters into the hands of conservatives.

While those same elites were telling anyone who would listen that this was the climate change election, people in north and central Queensland were worried about jobs.

That’s not to dismiss climate change as an important issue, but it’s far easier prioritise if you’re a high-income earner living in Mosman or Northcote than if you’re a Townsville tradie without a job.

My uncle represented the Labor Party in the federal seat of McMillan in Victoria for more than a decade in the 1980s and early 1990s.

He spent his much of his career fighting for the blue-collar jobs of LaTrobe Valley coal miners and Gippsland timber workers.

The Labor party was there to ensure not just that these people had a job, but that it was a safe one that paid a fair and decent wage.

Yet Labor has slowly drifted away from these people as it fights off a Green insurgence on the streets of inner-city Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Labor lost McMillan – now called Monash - when the timber workers deserted them in 1993.

It’s now a safe Liberal seat.

The trend of blue-collar workers rebuking Labor has continued since.

In the 2004 election campaign John Howard travelled to northern Tasmania and promised to save the timber workers’ jobs.

His policy won the support of the powerful forestry and mining union the CFMEU and helped sweep him to victory.

And again in 2019 it was the coalition who backed mining jobs in Queensland while Labor looked flaky as it tried to appease Green sensibilities in the inner-city.

A quick glance at Australia’s electoral map now shows the red of the ALP confined mostly to the inner-suburbs of our biggest cities.

The exception, of course, is here in the Northern Territory.

Here the swings to the coalition were smaller than in Queensland.

But there may be a simple explanation for that.

Federal Labor’s campaign in the NT was about one thing; jobs.

It promised support for a gas pipeline from the Beetaloo basin to Darwin and pledged $300 million for a ship-lift at the Darwin Port – projects designed to create long-term jobs.

Meanwhile the unions here ran a strong, disciplined campaign about providing better wages for low-paid workers.

As Chief Minister Michael Gunner said in an interview with Sky News on Monday: “I’d say there’s a fair assessment that we didn’t put the case about jobs strongly enough in Queensland.

Now for me, it’s a very basic Labor value, you’ve got to put this in logical order; can we get you a job, can that job be one that pays fair wages and will it be a safe workplace?

“Once that’s sorted then you win the policy arguments on everything else but you’ve got to win the case around jobs.”

In Queensland, the coalition won the case around jobs.

That’s why people voted for them.

And if Labor supporters continue to describe these people as stupid morons for making that decision, they can expect to spend an extended period in the political wilderness.