Risk-taking Labor has presented a fork in the road

Bill Shorten during his visit to the Broncos in Brisbane on Monday. Picture: AAP

This election is a fork-in-the-road poll where competing agendas mean radically different directions for the nation. This is no Tweedledum and Tweedledee contest. Yet the paradox is the absence of any public excitement or engagement about the choice Australia faces.

Bill Shorten’s program is the most radical proposed by an opposition since John Hewson’s 1993 Fightback manifesto. But the differences are also critical: Hewson’s was the only time a neoliberal blueprint from the pro-market Right was put to the people, while Shorten offers a progressive agenda, a fusion of traditional Labor ideas and modern Centre-Left fashion with climate change in the vanguard.

It is not just the ideological origins that are different. Where Hewson was an ideologue preaching progress through sacrifice, Shorten is a blend of populist and pragmatist. Where Hewson was a policy theorist who misjudged the public mood, Shorten is obsessed with reading public sentiment. Where Hewson was naive about politics, Shorten is a transactional political warrior.

Comparing 1993 and 2019, the spirit of the times could hardly be more different. In 1993 there was serious tribulation. Hewson, expecting to win off the worst recession since the war and unemployment that broke 11 per cent, gambled the nation would vote for a radical dose of neoliberalism as the answer.

In 2019 the nation, after 27 years of economic growth, is complacent and indifferent, yet agitated about the cost of living and compressed wage levels. It is mired in cynicism and distrust towards all politicians. Inspiration and faith are in short supply.

At the start of the 1993 campaign, Newspoll showed the opposition leading by 45 to 40 per cent. Keating was the underdog. But Labor won the campaign. Despite Keating’s denial that it was the dominant factor, the government’s scare campaign against Fightback was decisive.

After the defeat, Liberal Party director Andrew Robb offered the insight: “Sadly, the bottom line was that the more information that people were given about the Fightback plan, the more questions it raised.”

A briefing note from Keating’s office chief, Don Russell, in November 1992 pointed to a crack of hope for Labor: “We have made Hewson the issue to such an extent that people have taken their eyes off the recession.”

The two most dangerous aspects of Fightback were the 15 per cent GST and its retreat from Medicare, in which patients would meet a higher share of costs as bulk billing was cut back.

Shorten’s policies have no such comparable folly.

Hewson’s defeat had consequences that lasted a generation.

It drove the Liberal Party back towards the middle ground and it drove oppositions into election agendas defined by caution and popularity — the “small target” strategy. The related lesson was: don’t show the government your election policies too early, a tactic John Howard followed in his 1996 victory.

Shorten has broken the mould. He runs on a brave, bold and risky agenda. He offers significant policy and philosophical change.

And he has released much of his program in advance of the election. Some policies carry over from the 2016 poll.

But Shorten, unlike Hewson, has mobilised populist sentiment and grievance for his changes. Shorten stands for higher taxes and higher spending in health and education — calculating people will prioritise services over taxes.

He stands for government intervention over market forces, claims the economic system is “rigged” against the people and wants to cut down the tall poppies in an age when elites and the big end of town are discredited.

He is close to the zeitgeist of the times, certainly closer than Hewson was. Where Hewson offered ideological coherence — hardly a plus — Shorten presents as the people’s friend coming to restore fairness. He plays intergenerational and redistributional politics.

Shorten appeals to the younger generation on housing prices and seeks a redistribution in favour of the majority via his crackdown that punishes a minority through removing concessions for capital gains, negative gearing, trusts and refunds of franking credits.

The intriguing question is whether Shorten has misjudged on tax. Labor’s arrogant dismissal of the bulk of the government’s tax cuts as being on the “never-never” cannot conceal that from the middle of the income range upwards, people are better off under the ­Coalition.

Sounds like an effective TV advertisement — if people care.

In the end, Keating transferred some of the public anger over the recession on to Hewson. But Scott Morrison’s main problem is a government consumed by disunity, instability and a revolving-door prime ministership — and these cannot be transferred anywhere else.

In many ways, however, a more illuminating contrast is between Shorten and the previous campaign that brought Labor into ­office from opposition, that of Kevin Rudd in 2007. Shorten and Rudd have followed different strategies, reflecting the men and the times.

Rudd was pro-business (think about that) and kept his distance from the unions. He campaigned as a social moderate, a fiscal conservative and an economic reformer.

The ALP’s national secretary at the time, Tim Gartrell, said: “Kevin wasn’t an orthodox Labor man. He was more eclectic, and that helped us.”

Shorten is the ultra-orthodox Labor man, union official, factional operative, appeaser of the CFMEU, a transactional leader. Unlike Shorten, Rudd fell outside the emotional and factional heartland of his own party. Julia Gillard said the marketing of Rudd was brilliant: “If you want the new John Howard then you want Kevin Rudd. It was a bit of jazziness without jeopardising safety. Very clever.”

Nobody remotely considers saying Shorten is the new Morrison. Rudd worked at denying Howard any point of lethal attack: he abandoned Labor’s private school “hit list”, pledged to turn back asylum-seeker boats (a promise he broke), and while opposing the Iraq war, Rudd would pursue the Afghanistan war.

Shorten is a strategic break from Rudd on most but not all ­issues. Where Rudd offered reassurance and only modest changes to the economic status quo (apart from abolition of Work Choices), Shorten offers sweeping changes to the tax system and a substantial spending agenda. Shorten is taking policy risks Rudd would never have contemplated.

This is because Shorten judges the public is disenchanted, that it wants a decisive break, a fresh start and a display of audacity.

Shorten believes Australia is a far more progressive country in 2019 than 2007, after the legislation of same-sex marriage. If Shorten fails, it will be because he has misjudged and overreached on these pivotal assumptions.

Their similarities, however, should not be overlooked. Both believe in the US alliance and are firm on national security. Both have sought to neutralise the government’s tax cuts (Shorten just in the short term). Both are passionate that Labor must own the climate change issue and pitch to idealism as Shorten, 12 years later, takes a far bigger risk than Rudd with a climate change policy based on 45 to 50 per cent targets that must render significant economic damage and dislocation.

The risk for Shorten is that the nation, as it approaches the ballot box, might decide his Labor experiment is too much, that Shorten ­offers too little on economic management and the cost of living and that he constitutes too great a risk.

There is a mystery compared with 2007. Rudd captured the imagination of the country, just as Gough Whitlam had in 1972 and Bob Hawke did in 1983. This is the story of Labor leaders who win. They ride the winds of change. They fire up the public. The sense of hope, inspiration and excitement shines through.

Where is it now? Where has it gone?

In 2019, Shorten leads in the polls and has a coalition of forces that can deliver him the election. Yet there is no enthusiasm on anything like the scale of 1972, 1983 or 2007. Kevin 07 was a phenomenon — Howard even lost his seat. Will Shorten create this spirit in the campaign, or will he lose — or has Australian politics fundamentally changed?