Labor must explain itself

kudelka

TO some of us, the poor performance of the Labor Party in a series of elections since 2007 has not been a surprise. Federal Labor lost its majority and Labor has struggled across the states. In my view, the federal experiment looms large. We may one day look back on the election of Kevin Rudd as an anomaly.

The trouble for Labor is that it forgot how and why it won in 07. If it had kept that in mind, it might have gone from strength to strength but now it's struggling for relevance.

Cast your mind back to the Rudd ascendancy. It was predicated on one important point: he pretended to be John Howard lite. Remember the television commercials: "I'm an economic conservative." Australia didn't suddenly switch from a conservative country to a progressive one in 2007. Quite the opposite. People were able to express their fear of WorkChoices, their concern about climate change and their "time for a change" feelings, precisely because Rudd Labor did not offer a progressive agenda.

Rudd, back then, was a sufficiently canny politician not to frighten the horses. He promised people they could keep the strong economy, the steady hand and the conservative approach but get to axe WorkChoices and share the feel-good warmth of signing Kyoto and apologising to our indigenous fellow Australians.

That was it. That was the bargain. Everything else would stay the same. Rudd Labor would keep our borders strong, manage the economy conservatively, maintain the indigenous intervention, keep fighting terrorism and promise to continue improvements in health and education. Voters compared this deal with a successful but tired Liberal leader who seemed in no mood to move on, and they bought Rudd Labor.

There was no reason not to change. The trouble for Labor is that its MPs failed to understand the deal. They took it as approval to implement a more progressive agenda. So our border protection was substantially softened and once the laws passed parliament and word spread, people smugglers were back in business. Now we have a preponderance of detention centres, asylum-seekers and boats, with no solution in sight.

When the global financial crisis hit, some say Labor hit the panic button. I would say it returned to type. It ridiculed the shadow treasurer at the time, Julie Bishop, for suggesting we should wait and see. It borrowed as much as it could as quickly as it could. Remember, I am not making this up, it actually borrowed money to send out cheques to most Australians. It also threw money at poorly administered free pink batt schemes and school hall programs, seeing billions of dollars wasted and ensuring that this "economic stimulus" was still being spent long after the danger of the financial crisis had passed.

Waiting and seeing, and spending less money more carefully obviously would have been the way to go. But this was Labor's excuse to spend and one of the visceral expectations that most Australians have about Labor's weaknesses is that it spends too much.

The other negative voter expectation Labor needs to avoid is increased taxes. Yet it has also done this. A new tax for mining, a levy to pay for flood damage and now a carbon tax it had specifically ruled out. So Australia was promised economic conservatism and strong borders but was given weak borders, more debt, wasteful spending, new taxes and broken promises. If I were advising Labor I would find this mix difficult to work with but I would concentrate on two things, fixing the problems and explaining the issues.

The Gillard government seems intent on doing neither. We have no remedy proposed for the border protection issue, the push for new taxes continues and we are told continually the wasteful spending was necessary to save the nation from recession, as if borrowed money wasted can ever be helpful.

But worse than this has been the explanation to voters. Labor's natural instinct has not been to apologise for its errors and seek support to repair matters. Rather, it attacks the voters.

If voters express concern about boat arrivals they are branded intolerant and even racist by Labor MPs and their fellow travellers. If they object to paying a new tax that they were promised they would not face, they are branded nutters and extremists. And if they dare suggest climate change may not be quite the emergency Labor and the Greens suggest, they are denounced as deniers.

In policy terms I would argue Labor has long been on the wrong road. But even if you agree with all of Labor's policy directions, this can't be the way to win over the voters. Pity the traditional Labor voter who is worried about the effect of a mining tax, objects to the broken promise and impost of a carbon tax, and is worried about the integrity of our borders. Labor's rhetoric tells that voter it doesn't want his or her vote. And certainly the Greens don't want it. If Labor can't find a way to listen to and understand these voters, it leaves them only one place to go.