Paul Keating warns Labor over worker security

As Labor tries to come to grips with its surprise federal election defeat, former prime minister Paul Keating has issued a warning on future policy.

Labor MP Chris Bowen who is delivering the inaugural Paul Keating Lecture tonight, pictured with Paul Keating. Picture Supplied

Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has issued a warned to his party on future election policy, saying working people will “vote against you” if they are uncertain about the economic framework putting jobs at risk.

As Labor tries to come to grips with its surprise federal election defeat, Mr Keating said on Thursday night that Labor needed to formulate policies for an era when interest rates are low and the rise of developing nations is threatening the livelihood of working-class Australians.

“Working people, they think, what happens, if they are not sure of the economic framework, they think, ‘hang on my job’s at risk,’ and so they go and vote against you, even though you’re actually trying to help them,” he said.

Labor MP Chris Bowen. Picture: Supplied

The former prime minister and treasurer was nonetheless upbeat about the capacity of Labor to bounce back after its third election loss in a row.

“It is the only party in Australia that is committed to the lot of ordinary people,” he said. “It doesn’t represent vested interests, it often mucks itself up, it’s a bit rough and ready, but at heart it always has altruistic notions of what the country is, and should be.”

Mr Keating cited big gains made under Labor including equitable access to health, education, aged care, childcare, occupational superannuation and a 70 per cent real increase in wages since 1992.

Speaking at Bankstown in Sydney’s west where he grew up and later represented voters in the seat of Blaxland, Mr Keating was commenting on the same day the ALP’s election defeat review was released.

He spoke immediately after an inaugural speech, named in his honour, by Chris Bowen, treasury spokesman in the Bill Shorten-led opposition and now Labor’s health spokesman.

Earlier, Mr Bowen said he accepted his part of responsibility for Labor’s election loss.

He said Labor had failed to convince working people about a policy agenda designed to give those “forgotten by the political system” a fairer chance.

Honoured to deliver the inaugural Paul Keating Lecture, hosted by Jason Clare at the Bryan Brown Theatre in Bankstown.

Posted by Chris Bowen on Wednesday, 6 November 2019

“We didn’t succeed in bringing our individual policies together into an overall narrative in a way which connected with, and reassured people who are battling,” he said.

The former treasury spokesman’s comments on this point appeared consistent with the ALP review’s conclusion that “Labor did not craft and convey a persuasive jobs and economic growth story that augmented its mission to reduce inequality”.

But Mr Bowen, who has faced internal party criticism as an architect of Labor’s tax policies to wind back negative gearing and franking credits on share dividends, seemed in many ways unrepentant.

He heaped most blame for the election outcome on what he called a “pandemic of populism” among voters that followed trends in the US and Britain.

Lashing out at the Coalition, he accused Scott Morrison of being a “charlatan” and the worst of his party’s three prime ministers over the past six years.

“He believes in nothing but himself,” Mr Bowen said. “He had a plan to win an election, but no plan for Australia.

“He is, at his core, a charlatan who falls back on sound bites and scare, when the country needs passion and plans. The thing about charlatans is this: time catches up with them.”

Mr Bowen further excused Labor’s defeat as not surprising because it reflected a long-term trend in which its primary vote had slipped by 1.3 per cent at every one of the past 10 federal elections.

He said the defeat was a “sub-set” of what had occurred in the developed world with Donald Trump winning the US presidential election and the majority Brexit vote despite contrary predictions.

Mr Bowen urged his party not to accept the advice of Liberals and “shrink into a ball” by “dropping a big agenda” and becoming “pale imitation” of the other side.

“This has been a false debate: should Labor have a big policy agenda or a small one? To me, this isn’t the right question. It is how do we frame out policy agenda to reflect our long-term mission to improve the lot of working people? And in turn, earn their support?”

“To me, the message of the 2019 election for Labor is not that we need to go to the people with a smaller, less ambitious message. It is that we need to go to the people with a message that better connects with their concerns and their hopes for themselves and their country.”

Proposing Labor offer voters a new “compact” at the next election, Mr Bowen said his party could “draw on the inspiration of Keating” by establishing its credentials “unequivocally” as the superior party of economic growth.

With many voters accepting what he called a “scare campaign” about Labor’s tax and spending policies, he said Labor’s commitment to social justice must partner with a “fiscally rigorous, prudent approach”.

“New spending commitments aren’t the only way to improve social outcomes. Institutional reforms, incentives and rigorous insistence on high standards are sometimes better and at the very least, must accompany spending decisions.”

Accusing the Morrison government of making an “art form” of framing attacks through identity politics and a cultural prism, Mr Bowen launched a strong defence of Labor’s “perfectly sensible proposal” to promote the sale of more electric cars.

Yet Labor faced a “cultural attack” that few saw coming with “peak hyperbole” by the Liberals that was effective in declaring cheaper electric cars were an “assault on tradies and four-wheel drives”.

“The Liberals were keen to see the decline in the blue-collar support for Labor be cemented in, and to play identity politics in a hardball fashion.

“We need to counter this flagrant identity politics engaged in by our opponents with a full- throated exposition of our values.

“We need to be very clear with people who work hard and who are concerned about their job security, the economic security of their families and the future of their communities, wherever they are in Australia, including regional Australia.”