The day the Labor Party died

Former Labor leader Kim Beazley and his reaction to the Tampa Affair could offer Anthony Albanese a lesson from the past. Picture: AAP

After the Labor Party concludes its review into its stunning election loss, you can bet on one thing. The report will almost certainly be a mildly critical analysis of personality, policy, strategy and marketing.

It will probably make a bunch of tepid proposals, tinkering at the edges of process and policy formulation.

Soul searching is a grim business in politics and the party review is not likely to hit on any nuggets of wisdom as to why Labor lost the unlosable election.

Was Bill Shorten really the reason Labor lost the election? Picture: Kym Smith

The neatest, most correct answer is, of course, Bill Shorten. The next neatest, most correct answer is Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen. Both remain in the party and show no sign of trundling off to attend to their gardening.

One wonders if the review in the event of a loss at the next federal election might come up with another neatest, most correct answer: Anthony Albanese.

Albanese is not travelling well. Spooked by Labor’s big tax and spend agenda, Albanese is spluttering along careful not to frighten the horses, endorsing Coalition policy and voting for it on the floor of the parliament, giving new meaning to the #metoo hashtag.

There may be a modicum of wisdom in the approach. After what was essentially the longest unofficial election campaign in our history, people are tired of partisan politics. The Coalition won against all predictions and there is a view that opposition for opposition’s sake would play heavily against Labor and Albanese at least in the short term.

There’s a litany of metoos under Albanese including voting for large tax cuts for high wealth individuals, larger proportionately than someone on the average working wage. Labor voted with the government to avoid a wide-ranging parliamentary inquiry into Crown Casino. Call me cynical but the reason for this particular acquiescence would appear to be somewhat different. The gaming industry is seen a mind of retirement home for many Labor politicians.

Late last month, Albanese addressed the caucus to explain the reasons for Labor’s compliance.

“Even though it’s only dawning on people slowly, effect­ively the government is in a similar position in the Senate now as 2004. And they will get most of their agenda through parliament,” Mr Albanese told his parliamentary colleagues.

“We will often be confronted with circumstances where we will vote on an issue which includes measures we agree with and measures we disagree with. That is exactl­y what happened with tax and it will keep on happening.”

After the 2004 election, the Coalition enjoyed a majority in both houses. There was no horse trading to get its legislation through the Senate. Now, it must deal with the crossbenches. The Coalition has 35 seats and requires four more votes to get its legislation through from a cross bench mix of the two senate seats held by Pauline Hanson and her party, two from the Centre Alliance and Jacqui Lambie.

The voting patterns are now well understood. PHON will vote with the government but the government still needs to satisfy the Centre Alliance and/or Jacqui Lambie to get its legislation through.

It is not 2004 all over again.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison makes the point often enough that the 2019 election gave Labor its lowest primary vote in a hundred years. It’s not quite correct. Labor’s primary vote in the 1931 election was lower than it was this time around but that would be clutching at straws. 100 years or 88 matters little in the scheme of things.

I met with a few old socialist left salts within the Labor Party in Victoria a couple of weeks ago. Given their factional parity with Albanese albeit from another state, I was surprised to hear the vehemence of their criticism of the opposition leader.

They rounded on Albanese’s attempts to have Victorian CFMMEU boss, John Setka expelled from the party. There is probably good reason for Setka to be shown the door, but Albanese’s intervention very much falls into the category of starting a fight he can’t win or more precisely isn’t likely to win. From a man still with ‘L’ plates on as party leader was a bold step into an uncertain future.

If it was a matter of principle over practice, it could be understood but Albanese has shown a willingness to ignore principle in the name of the small political target.

But the SL men, battle hardened from years of elections and representative politics, didn’t point to Albanese as the party’s biggest problem. Nor did they see Shorten as the reason the party teeters on the abyss of relevance.

Rather, they pointed to Kim Beazley who took Labor into the metoo business in 2001 over the Tampa Affair, at first agreeing with John Howard, then voting against government legislation before settling in for a meek metoo strategy on refugee settlement. It was, they said, the day the Labor Party died.

The Tampa, widely credited with helping John Howard to victory in the 2001 election.

It is a matter of record that Howard won the election in November that year, picking up two seats from Labor. Beazley’s strategy was to play the small target. The 9/11 attacks had shaken up the world. Incumbent governments were likely to be re-elected. Labor would have probably lost without the Tampa Affair. Certainly, John Howard has said so and it is hard to disagree with him.

Beazley traded principle for expedience and Labor has been bedevilled on refugee policy since. The Coalition relishes the opportunity to slap it around on this policy area. Any day where refugee policy comes to the fore in the political sphere is a bad day for Labor.

I don’t know that I agree with the sentiment of my two SL mates but I can see the sense in their argument.

What it does is offer Albanese a precedent to draw upon. If he has considered Labor’s response to the Tampa Affair, he appears not to have learnt anything from it.

In politics there is little to be gained from the basic semaphoric practice of waving the white flag. As a tactic it offers nothing but the probability of enduring failure and a loss of confidence among the dwindling numbers of the party faithful.

Or, to put it another way, if you don’t fight, you can’t win.