Labor underestimating Scott Morrison, just like John Howard: Joel Fitzgibbon

Joel Fitzgibbon says Labor underestimated John Howard and ‘institutional elitism’ is causing the party to make the same mistake with Scott Morrison.

Labor Minister Joel Fitzgibbon. Picture: Getty

Joel Fitzgibbon says Labor underestimated John Howard when he was prime minister and “a form of institutional elitism” was causing the party to make the same mistake with Scott Morrison.

With Labor in a debate about whether it should retain Bill Shorten’s crackdown on tax breaks for property investors, the Hunter MP will declare that Mr Howard would have been a “oncer” if Kim Beazley did not propose to limit capital-gains tax exemptions ahead of the 1998 election.

In a speech at an event commemorating the 25th anniversary of Mr Howard becoming the nation’s leader, Mr Fitzgibbon will say Labor is being weighed down by “an unhealthy belief in our intellectual and moral superiority”.

“Yet we keep losing elections,” Mr Fitzgibbon will say at the UNSW Canberra event, to be held online on Tuesday.

“Scott Morrison is the latest to benefit from Labor’s failure to take its main opponent sufficiently seriously. Labor massively underestimated him when he took the Liberal Party leadership in 2018.

“I vividly recall too, hearing senior Labor people dismissively speaking of John Howard in 1996. Many Cabinet Ministers since, have been similarly underestimated.”

In contrast to Labor’s dismissiveness of the Coalition, Mr Fitzgibbon will say he did not believe Mr Howard underestimated his opponents, including when Mark Latham led the ALP to the 2004 election.

Mr Fitzgibbon, who witnessed all of the Howard government from the opposition benches, will say Mr Morrison displayed similar “shrewd political judgment” and political skill to the former prime minister, who led Australia from 1996 to 2007.

The speech is in contrast to comments from Labor frontbencher and potential future leader Tanya Plibersek, who recently declared she neither liked or respected Mr Morrison.

“There’s a lot of people on the other side of politics that I like and respect, he’s not one of them,” Ms Plibersek told Sky News last month.

Mr Howard, former prime minister Tony Abbott and former deputy prime minister John Anderson are also among the speakers of the UNSW event.

Mr Fitzgibbon will use the speech to outline strategic mistakes Labor made while in opposition to Mr Howard, including proposing changes to the capital gains tax system and Mr Latham’s “forestry policy debacle” ahead of the 2004 election.

He will also declare it was a mistake for Labor to oppose the GST after the Coalition won the 1998 election.

“In doing so we chose to ignore the re-elected government’s mandate and sidelined ourselves from the Senate debate,” Mr Fitzgibbon will say.

With Labor either behind or even with the Coalition since April last year, Mr Fitzgibbon will outline how each of Mr Howard overcame bad spells in the polls in each term he was leader, only to be re-elected as prime minister three times.

Mr Fitzgibbon noted Mr Howard lost the popular and two-party preferred vote in 1998, and led in Newspoll for most of the term ahead of the 2001 poll.

In 2004, Labor led or was equal with the Coalition in 20 of the 24 Newspolls while Mr Latham was leader.

“It’s easy to think about the Howard Government as one which was pretty much invincible for most of its lifetime, but that is far from the reality. For several long periods, Labor’s years in the wilderness looked like being somewhat shorter,” he will say.

“The fact that it wasn’t, is testimony to John Howard’s shrewd political judgment and political skill. I’ll make a passing comment here; Scott Morrison has learnt much from him.

“Along with his ability to read the mood of the electorate, agility and pragmatism were among John Howard’s greatest strengths.

“He was no doubt assisted by the presence of National Party Members in his Cabinet who would have kept him abreast of what people were thinking in the bush.

“By contrast, Labor’s lack of sufficient regional representation in the Parliamentary Party is a barrier to policy and electoral success.”