Labor now the party engulfed by chaos

Bill Shorten speaks to the media. Picture: AAP

For months leading up to the federal election, and during the course of the election, Bill Shorten and his acolytes, as if from a permanent script, regularly, repeatedly, often personally and certainly leeringly appropriated to the government, and Scott Morrison, every epithet to suggest dis­organisation, disunity and chaos.

Indeed, the Labor Party launch saw Tanya Plibersek demean herself, describing people who might disagree with the Labor Party on major issues as people cheering on “hatred or fear”.

We saw where the hatred and fear were in the booths on Saturday. An Abbott follower was stabbed, Tony Abbott’s posters defaced with the C-word and images of Hitler. How the wheel turns!

Chris Bowen invited those who did not like his economic policies to vote against them, and they did in droves. Two out of every three Australians who voted on Saturday voted for someone other than the Labor candidate.

In Queensland, it was almost three out of four who voted for someone other than the Labor candidate. The Labor Party has been wiped out.

No time to talk about the ­“experts” whose full-time job it is to read and report on likely election outcomes. It was beyond laughable to hear people on Saturday night arguing that Labor would win 80-odd seats.

Yet just as Labor was hammered, in defiance of the “experts” in the NSW election, so it has now happened federally.

In what must be one of the profound ironies of Saturday, the Labor Party in NSW was holding off finding a new leader until after the federal election.

Now, Labor in NSW, and federally, is without a leader. Scapegoats are being sought. The party is not devoid of good people. But it is hopelessly devoid of people with judgment.

Yet some, since Saturday, have sought to argue the virtue of their economic policies and in fact defend them, arguing that the party had failed to adequately explain the policies. The truth is that they were perfectly explained, arrogantly and ­repetitively.

But what Labor did not understand was that it was poking the bear which is the silent majority.

And they took their revenge.

For example in the Hunter and in north Queensland, here was the Labor Party, in bed with the Greens, demonising coal-fired power and their Greens partner arguing the end of the coalmining industry and the $65 billion coal export trade. Rank and file members of the Labor Party, workers, voted for their own survival, not that of Labor

The voter, silent and often afraid to speak out, had his say in the privacy of the ballot box.

The massive push by churches and other groups, especially ethnic groups, to vote for national values took hold. These people don’t ­answer polls. They just vote.

And they took electoral scalps to defend their jobs, their livelihoods and their way of life.

Now we will see the real meaning of political chaos as various candidates battle for the task of rebuilding Labor from the mess into which Mr Shorten has taken them.

There are two problems there. The first is that Mr Morrison on Saturday virtually won the next election as well.

What were marginal Coalition seats now enjoy thumping majorities thanks to Labor’s abysmal ­policy formulation.

The second problem is that those seeking the leadership federally were themselves the architects of the very policies that brought on this Labor humiliation.

If Anthony Albanese can establish that these policies were formulated without his imprimatur, then he will walk in.

It is because of this policy implosion, ripping $387 billion of tax from working and corporate Australia; $34bn out of superannuation; stealing franking credits; standing negative gearing on its head to produce higher rents and reduced prices for housing at the point of sale; a 50 per cent increase in capital gains tax for some poor coot who is trying to save for his retirement; and that is before we get to an energy policy which, according to professor Warwick ­McKibbin, would be $60bn more damaging to the economy than that of the Coalition and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs with electricity prices going through the roof.

The public said pull the other leg, it plays Nat King Cole.

Some say the bolter in the leadership contest is the newly minted member for Rankin, Jim Chalmers. But this is the bloke who was Wayne Swan’s chief of staff when four years of surpluses were promised and not delivered, handing over a debt of $176bn to Mr ­Abbott’s Coalition government; and if reports are correct, played a key role in Labor’s policy to ditch franking credits.

Good luck in finding a leader out of that lot who won’t be crucified by a Prime Minister right on top of the detail.

The chaos that Labor wanted to attribute to the Coalition has now arrived on its own doorstep.