Labor urged to focus on business in bid to win votes

Labor frontbencher Clare O’Neil has warned a tax and spend agenda will not help Anthony Albanese win an election.

Labor frontbencher Clare O’Neil.

Labor frontbencher Clare O’Neil has warned a tax and spend agenda will not help Anthony Albanese win an election, urging her Right faction colleagues to steer the party towards a “pro-enterprise, pro-small business, pro-entrepreneurship” stand and shift its focus from the climate change debate.

The opposition innovation spokeswoman said the Right faction needed to broaden its internal policy battles from climate change to the economy and shape the ­Opposition Leader’s team into being “the natural home of Australia’s millions of small business owners and sole traders”.

Right faction leader Joel Fitzgibbon. Picture: Milan Scepanovic

The call from Ms O’Neil for a pro-business policy agenda is set to spark the next round of internal debate within the Labor caucus. Party divisions increased this week on gas and climate policy, leading to public spats between senior MPs and major unions.

Right faction leader Joel Fitzgibbon attacked Victorian Right frontbencher Mark Dreyfus on Friday after Nine newspapers ­reported the legal affairs spokesman called the resources spokesman the “the idiot for Hunter” over his views on climate policy.

“I wear that as a badge of honour,” Mr Fitzgibbon told 2GB radio. “In my experience if Mark Dreyfus is criticising you, you are probably on the right track.”

With some Labor Left MPs ­believing the COVID-19 pandemic warrants a return to Bill Shorten’s big-government agenda, Ms O’Neil said the “role and obligation of the Labor Right is to maintain a laser focus on creating jobs and growing the economy”.

“Some of that discussion is about climate and energy, most of it is not,” Ms O’Neil told The Australian. “There is a much broader agenda here — around productivity, skills, taxation, investment, how we grow small businesses into bigger ones. And if we get this right, that’s what will win us the next election.

“Tax and spend will not win us an election.”

Ms O’Neil said that, while the internal climate debate was important, there should be an even stronger focus on the type of economy a future Labor government would create.

“Jobs and the cost of living are what people are talking about around their kitchen table right now, not whether Labor sets a 2030 emissions target,” she said.

Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Mr Fitzgibbon’s backers within the party say he has been outspoken on the climate issue so it does not dominate the next election campaign and distract from Labor’s economic agenda.

Mr Fitzgibbon endorsed Ms O’Neil’s push for the faction to embrace pro-market and business-friendly policies.

“We need to retain the Keating legacy, play to our strengths and neutralise this damaging, unhelpful and disproportionate focus on climate change targets,” he said.

Labor’s tax policies are set to be the next major internal debate ahead of the next election, with its position being unclear on already legislated income tax cuts.

Mr Albanese has flagged the party will drop its franking credit crackdown taken to the last election. But there has been no indication on other major revenue measures, including a crackdown on negative gearing, superannuation tax concessions and family trusts.

The party is also yet to ­determine whether it will go to the election vowing to rip up stage three of the government’s already legislated $158bn income tax package, or whether it will back the fast-tacking of stage two in the budget.

The measures, considered ­regressive by some Labor MPs, will flatten the tax bracket to 30 per cent for all workers earning between $45,000 and $200,000.

Labor Right senator Kimberley Kitching said social democratic parties could only be viable if they championed “entrepreneurship and small business”.

“Businesses create the majority of jobs in Australia, as should be the case,” she said.