Labor should be bold and win mandate for action

If the ALP claims victory, will it play a conservative game in the hope of staying in power? Or be brave and force policy change?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese during Question Time in the House of Representatives in Parliament House Canberra last month. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

If the Coalition is re-elected in May, during its next term it will surpass 10 years in power. It has already been in office for 8½ years. Three full terms, three different prime ministers. A lost decade, according to Anthony Albanese this week. Whether or not that is true, it has certainly been a lost decade for many highly regarded Labor politicians who have languished on the wrong side of the Treasury benches since Kevin Rudd was resoundingly defeated in 2013.

Think about the names who have spent so long away from the levers of power: Chris Bowen, Penny Wong, Richard Marles, Tanya Plibersek, Bill Shorten, Tony Burke and Mark Butler were all senior cabinet ministers during the life cycle of the last Labor government. As leader of the House of Representatives, Albanese was part of the leadership group during the entirety of the Rudd and Gillard years, briefly serving as deputy PM near the very end.

Others who enjoyed ministerial posts during the Rudd-Gillard years and in shadow cabinet include Catherine King, Don Farrell, Mark Dreyfus, Julie Collins, Brendan O’Connor and Jason Clare. Throw in two former state and territory Labor leaders, Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher, and that is more incumbency experience than you’d usually see on an opposition frontbench.

On the one hand, it makes Scott Morrison’s claims that a reason to re-elect his government is because Labor isn’t experienced enough laughable. This scare campaign is designed to play into the Coalition’s traditional polling strengths on national security and the economy. Given the portfolios the collection of names above have held, to suggest they aren’t capable of governing is a furphy.

However, on the other hand you can bet Morrison will zero in on the criticism that when last in government those named were party to failures on the twin fronts of national security and the economy. They didn’t stop the refugee boats, which Morrison directly did as immigration minister shortly after the 2013 election. Never mind the details. They let debt balloon, having inherited a balanced budget after the Howard years. Never mind the global financial crisis, nor the hypocrisy, given where debt has spiralled to since the Coalition came into office.

While there are plenty of issues running against a Coalition re-election, if it is to orchestrate another come from-behind-victory, this is how it will do it. And if that happens, Labor will be under enormous pressure to clean out shop. To give a new generation a chance to move into senior positions and shape its next bid for a return to office.

Some of those named would move on willingly, others would need to be blasted out. A number of them probably see themselves as future Labor leaders, in defeat or victory. How such a scenario plays out will be fascinating if it happens.

Of course victory sets up a very different situation for federal Labor. Albanese becomes an unlikely prime minister: a figure of the left, someone who never thought they would make it to Labor leader much less PM. Someone with strong ideological convictions, but having been in public life for over 25 years, Albo also has a strong sense of compromise and pragmatism.

Will he seek to crash or crash through, like Gough Whitlam? Or will he aim for incremental policy development with true cabinet governance, along the lines of Bob Hawke? In a speech this week, Albo claimed he would pursue the latter approach, but such posturing may have been more for the cameras than prognosticators. While Hawke did run a traditional cabinet, using consensus politicking in the process, his micro-economic reforms were also a version of crash-or-crash-through politics. And that is exactly what Australia needs now.

A major reason to elect a new government just happens to also be the very thing Labor strategists are worried about. It would do things, hopefully, if elected. Look at the faults in the tax system and embark on holistic major reform. Address questions about the size of government verses community expectations on government, even if that leads to higher taxes. Our climate policies are woefully inadequate and therefore in need of serious policy shifting.

But Labor doesn’t want to frighten voters when it can smell victory. It will largely curl into a ball between now and polling day out of fear Morrison can pull off another victory.

My fear is that it will win without the mandate it needs to either get on with the serious business of government in the election aftermath, leaving it vulnerable to attacks, or become another do nothing administration.

Think about what this government has “achieved” over the last nearly nine years in office. Removal of carbon and mining taxes that would be rather handy right now. Yes, it stopped the boats, but as a deterrent it has since that time used genuine refugees in detention as reverse bait to dissuade others from making the same journey.

Australia did come through the pandemic well by global standards – an achievement state and federal governments get to own collectively. But we are deeply in debt now, weighed down by sluggish wages growth in an economic environment of rising inflation. The federation has been exposed as fractured, in need of reform. Our industrial relations system is a mess, something that’s been the case since the over-reaction to John Howard’s WorkChoices laws. And we haven’t even addressed the shortfalls in all manner of policy areas royal commissions have exposed that still exist: in banking, aged care and disability services.

The gap between quality and mainstream school education continues to grow, ruining traditional principles of egalitarianism in this country. Our universities have been underfunded for years, and the impact of the pandemic on international student numbers has already led to layoffs, with more pain to come courtesy of the funding lag effect in the system.

I know Australians are understandably traumatised by two years of pandemic life. While it’s a truism that things could have been much worse, the fatigue we all feel makes it politically difficult for our leaders to be bold. But that is what they must be for Australia to retain its living standards and global rankings.

If the government gets back for a fourth term it will splutter along, doing not very much – convinced it once again saved Australia from the risks of a Labor alternative. If Labor wins, its long list of ministers from the previous Labor government will have a choice: do they play a conservative game in the hope of staying in power for longer than last time? Or are they prepared to be bold, capable of avoiding the mistakes made last time?

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.