The Liberals' great mistake

LEARNING from your mistakes is as important in politics as it is in life. Earlier this week the West Australian Labor Party released its report into what went wrong for it at the state election in August.

The election loss was devastating for WA Labor, up there with the hurt felt by Liberals after John Hewson's defeat at the "unlosable" federal election in 1993.

The Labor report, titled Just One Seat Short, delves into the predictable explanations for the narrow defeat, including the effect of the Corruption and Crime Commission investigations into disgraced premier Brian Burke and Labor ministers, the early calling of the election and the importance of the Liberal leadership switch to Colin Barnett, now Premier.

But it also offers a frank review of the performances of key players and why they didn't do enough to win the single extra seat that would have returned Labor to office for a third consecutive term. Former state secretary Bill Johnston comes in for a lashing, as does former premier Alan Carpenter. The report's author, party heavyweight and former Victorian senator Robert Ray, also complains of a more general lack of professionalism in the WA division of the Labor Party.

However, the most important aspect of the report is not what is contained in it but the fact Labor commissioned one in the first place, even if it asked someone to write it who wasn't from WA and didn't even fly over for the month-long campaign. Independence is important to authorship, but isolation from the events being analysed is going too far.

In contrast, the federal Liberal Party, defeated more than 12 months ago, still hasn't reported back on what went wrong at the November 2007 election.

That goes a long way towards explaining the quagmire in which it finds itself when confronting contentious votes by Coalition senators, how to react to Labor's industrial relations changes and whether to support the recently announced greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.

Liberal frontbenchers I spoke to can't recall if an election performance review was even called for or if one is indeed ongoing. The federal Liberals have instituted a policy review, which hasn't reported back yet. That review was started by Opposition Deputy Leader Julie Bishop, who told me in an interview for the Nine Network's Sunday program earlier this year: "We won the policy debates at the last election. What we didn't win was the media manipulation and the spin. And perhaps we tended to believe that good policy would sell itself, but we (found) that Labor out-spun us in the way it put forward its policies."

Not much learning from mistakes going on there. New Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull decided Bishop needed to concentrate on her new portfolio as shadow treasurer, so he stripped her of the chairmanship of the policy review committee, handing it to Kevin Andrews. Andrews was the minister responsible for the botched implementation and sale of Work Choices. So underwhelming was his performance, he was dumped from the Coalition front bench after the election.

Andrews is thoughtful and may yet produce a good report. But giving him responsibility for the review after his past failures shows how unimportant policy has become for the Liberals.

The contrast between Labor and Liberal when it comes to learning from mistakes is significant, and is becoming more significant.

Liberals like to remind the public they are the most successful political party in Australia's history. The federal and state divisions of the Liberal Party, founded in 1944, have spent more time in government than they have in Opposition. However, an unwillingness to learn from mistakes has seen the federal Liberal Party's electoral successes in the second half of its life dip from its electoral success in the first half of its existence. The Liberals were in government almost twice as often in their first 32 years as they have been during the past 32 years.

John Howard was a recent exception to Liberal failure to learn from mistakes. He used his wilderness years from 1989 to 1995 to re-evaluate his leadership style, coming back to lead his party to four consecutive victories. However, he is no longer around to learn from his final mistake, misjudging his optimal retirement date.

Even though Ray attacks the WA Labor Party for a lack of professionalism, it is Labor's professionalism when compared with the Liberals that has allowed it to learn from past mistakes. As much as union militancy is increasingly a leftover from a bygone era, the union ties to the Labor Party give it an organisation the Liberal Party lacks when it is pushed into Opposition. That is why I have been critical of the Liberal Party's decision not to stand up more strongly for small business when voting on Labor's new IR package.

The loose association of small business interests is the closest thing the Liberals have to an organisation that can support the party when it is in Opposition.

Of course learning from mistakes requires much more than the release of a 19-page election performance review. For example, WA Labor has to get with the times (and its federal colleagues) and embrace uranium mining. But issuing a report 100 days after its defeat is a good start.

In contrast, the federal Liberal Party is still in denial more than a year after its defeat.

Peter van Onselen is an associate professor of politics and government at Edith Cowan University.