Deputy PM Richard Marles vows Labor will connect with all Australians

Richard Marles will focus on pastoral care and making sure all is working as well as it should.

Australia's new Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles poses for photos with Governor General David Hurley after taking his oath. Picture: AFP

As Labor sifted through the ashes of defeat after the 2019 election, Richard Marles conceded the party was shell-shocked and going through a grieving process as it came to terms with an election many thought they would win, and it would take time to develop a strategy for revival.

Three years later, Marles is now Deputy Prime Minister and spent several days this week as acting prime minister while Anthony Albanese was in Japan for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. He will be the second most senior minister in the new government.

“It is a moment of real excitement,” Marles, 54, says in an interview with Inquirer. “It is a remarkable achievement that we have won this election.” So how does he feel? “My head is spinning,” he replies. “I am feeling a lot of things: I’m relieved, excited, exhausted. It is an extraordinary moment.”

In that interview three years ago, Marles spoke frankly about how Labor needed to appeal to a wider range of voters, including people of faith, return the party to the middle ground of politics and put the government “on trial” for its performance.

“We’ve really got to go through a rigorous and courageous process of understanding what went wrong,” he told me in 2019.

Few thought Labor could grapple with why it lost the last election and chart a course to victory so soon – I certainly had doubts – but Marles says the keys to victory in 2022 were identified in the months after the 2019 election. The first step was not being consumed by the defeat and descending into division and acrimony.

“It was really important that we went through the process that we did after the last election,” Marles says. “Defeat is a big teacher. I felt in the lead-up to this election that, in a strange way, 2019 grounded us. We knew that we could not take an election for granted.

“It taught us about the need to lift our eyes and talk to a broad spectrum of Australians. That we needed to make sure that we were contesting and winning the centre. It led us to a set of policies directed at economic growth and productivity, and we really did need to reclaim the Hawke-Keating legacy.”

As the Labor caucus prepares to elect its full ministry and have them sworn in next week, it is also critical that Labor recognises the governance and party management failures of the Rudd-Gillard government, just as the Hawke government benefited from the experience of the Whitlam govern­ment.

Being Labor’s deputy leader has been a pathway to leader and often prime minister. Picture: Getty Images

The signs are encouraging. “One of the great strengths of the Hawke government was the robustness of its cabinet process that served the interests of the government really well and was integral to it being a successful long-term government,” Marles says.

Marles joined Albanese, Jim Chalmers, Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher to be sworn in as a quintet of interim ministers to administer departments on Monday. The Deputy Prime Minister concedes that he had not really turned his mind to what might happen after the election if Labor was successful.

“Until the last moment, my focus was the election,” he says. “The consequence of that, being on the other side now, is that everything has been a bit of a whirlwind. While I was aware this scenario existed, I had not thought that much about it. It has been amazing.”

It was at the swearing-in at Government House, observed by family and close colleagues, that Marles fully realised the new weight of responsibility. The five ministers had a quick informal meeting before Albanese and Wong jetted off to Tokyo.

“That was a really big deal,” Marles reflects.

The Labor government inherits a set of very difficult economic and security challenges. Marles believes that, post-pandemic and recession, Australia is at a critical turning point in history.

“It is the biggest moment for the country since the end of the second world war,” he says. “These next three years will go a long way to writing the story of the nation through the first half of this century. There is a huge weight of respons­ibility.”

When an asylum-seeker vessel was intercepted off the coast of Christmas Island, it fell to Marles as acting prime minister to respond. There was “a takeback procedure” by Australian Border Force and 15 people were returned to Sri Lanka.

Before the election Marles was attacked for being too close to China, and was labelled a “Manchurian candidate” and a risk to Australia’s defence relationships with the US and Britain. This overblown rhetoric caused a backlash in Liberal seats across the country. Anyone who knows Marles knows he is regarded as a hawk on defence and is close to US policymakers.

The allocation of ministerial portfolios is a decision for Albanese and Marles was coy when asked what he would like. He held the shadow portfolios of national reconstruction, employment, skills, small business and science. He is tipped for the defence or home affairs ministry.

When Labor was last in government, Marles served as a parliamentary secretary for innovation and industry, Pacific Island affairs and foreign affairs (2009-13). He served as trade minister in cabinet during the final months of the Rudd government.

As the 19th deputy prime minister and Labor’s 27th deputy leader, Marles prioritises loyalty to Albanese and wants to ensure that cabinet and party processes are working effectively across the next term. “What I hope is required of me is a completely trusted safe pair of extra hands and eyes and ears that Anthony can rely on without fail,” he says. “I’m there to support the program that (Albanese) seeks to implement. I’m there to be able to step in when his focus is necessarily elsewhere … like when he is overseas.

“Being the prime minister is a really big job and there are moments where you are going to be completely focused on an issue and you need someone who can be your delegate, your representative, who can channel what you want to happen in a space where you can’t be there.”

The often dysfunctional and chaotic governing and party processes during the Rudd government that led to defective policymaking and poor political judgment and fostered resentment in cabinet, caucus, the public service and among staff are seared into the minds of Labor MPs. Albanese and Marles are determined to ensure these processes work efficiently and effectively.

Richard Marles and John Eren at a Labor election function.Picture: Alan Barber

“We need to make sure that our internal governance, decision-making and cabinet processes are happening properly and utilising the talents of everyone in the cabinet,” Marles says. “There is a role to play there as deputy to ensure that is all working as well as it should.” Marles says Albanese has been “heroic” in how he has kept the party largely united, focused and disciplined in pursuit of power. Leading the opposition during the pandemic, when focus was on the prime minister and premiers, was difficult.

Albanese and Marles work well together, talk all the time and trust one another. They talked about the leader-deputy relationship at length three years ago. “There is a role in supporting Anthony (and) providing additional leadership within the party room,” Marles adds. “Inevitably there is a bit of pastoral care which is required. You need to have someone who is able to listen to issues that people have … playing that role in the community of those 100-plus people is also a really important aspect of what I do.

“It is one of the great honours of my professional life to be Albo’s deputy. I am so excited that he is the incumbent prime minister and I think he is going to be a wonderful prime minister, I really do. He is a really good and decent guy. Working so closely with him has only amplified all of that of me.”

Being Labor’s deputy leader has been a pathway to leader and often prime minister. Albanese was deputy leader and deputy prime minister. So was Julia Gillard and Paul Keating. Gough Whitlam was also deputy leader in opposition. While nobody is seriously contemplating Labor’s next leader, Marles is in the mix of contenders.

Labor has come to government with perhaps a one or two seat majority, only one-third of the primary vote, a 51.7 per cent two-party vote and a fundamentally reshaped parliament with the largest crossbench. This will affect how Labor governs.

“This is a very strong victory if you look at the two-party-preferred vote,” Marles says. “The success of a number of independents has obviously splintered the primary vote. It is really important that we are strongly engaging with the crossbench (and) working with them and listening to them.

“We do need to learn all the lessons in every way that come from this election. We can’t just bank the win and move on. We do need to be connecting with more Australians.

“So, notwithstanding the win, there are a whole lot of lessons in this for us and we have to learn them, and we will.”