Keating lashes Shorten: Labor is too far from the centre

Paul Keating has delivered a damning assessment of Labor under Shorten’s leadership.

Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating in his Sydney office. Picture: James Croucher

Paul Keating has delivered a damning assessment of Labor under Bill Shorten’s leadership, arguing it is veering too far from the political centre and will struggle to return to power.

The former prime minister fears Labor has not kept faith with his legacy and is playing to its dwindling base rather than making a compelling pitch for the winners of the new economy that the Hawke-Keating government created.

Mr Keating worries that the party lacks faith in the market to improve economic and social outcomes as it did a generation ago.

“The Labor Party today has not taken ownership and leadership of its own creation: that is the huge and wealthy middle-class economy which Labor exclusively created,” Mr Keating says.

“Labor has now, and has had, the core Labor program, and it’s now got the core Labor vote, which is about 35 per cent.

“Labor is now being attacked by the Greens in the capital cities, where votes are being sheared off. And it is being attacked by people like Pauline Hanson, who are pulling away blue-collar workers. But it is not getting concomitant support from the centre, which is locked up under the Coalition’s 42 per cent of the primary vote — and that is because it has lost the ability to speak aspirationally to people and to fashion policies to meet those aspirations.”

The comments are included in a new biography of Mr Keating, Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader. It draws on previously undisclosed archives, including ­interviews with more than 100 people, and 15 hours of new interviews with Mr Keating.

Mr Keating’s critique extends to the Coalition. He believes the long-term reform program has stalled and the country has been poorly served by recent political leaders. Mr Keating says neither Malcolm Turnbull nor Mr Shorten has the “vision”, “imagination” and “ambition” that the nation demands. “We have had a leadership deficit in as much as the leadership has not been able to frame a new economic and strategic agenda for Australia,” Mr Keating says.

“To change a country, you have to pull the responsibility for it down on to your own shoulders. It can’t be simply laid off to other people. You’ve got to do it. If you are the one that sees the vocation of it, or the mission of it, you have to take the responsibility.”

Mr Keating, a former treasurer (1983-91) and prime minister (1991-96), says a succession of governments has not been able to implement a coherent and effective program of economic reform or budget repair largely because they have lacked the “political auth­ority” to deliver it.

He argues that Labor, in government and opposition, has been unable to develop policies that appeal to the majority of ­voters who favour “an open, ­competitive, cosmopolitan” country with an enlarging vision for the future. At the last election, Labor received a dismal 34.7 per cent of the primary vote. After the defeat of the Keating government in 1996, Labor essentially walked away from the Hawke-Keating legacy, and Mr Keating personally.

Mr Keating believes the party has, for the most part, not returned to its centrist bearings. “It’s never been back there since we left,” he says.

Mr Keating believes the reversion in Labor thinking extends to the union movement, which exercises too much influence in the party and is no longer sufficiently focused on national economic interest as it was in the 1980s and 90s.

He argues Labor is under too much sway from factional bosses and party officials who have “an unerring sense of what they believe is right” and “lord it over the parliamentary party”. He suggests Labor lacks the broad, diverse membership it once had and its parliamentary ranks need to be refreshed with new talent.

In a series of extended interviews, Mr Keating argues voters got the 1996 election “badly wrong” and should not have dismissed his government. He respects John Howard and stressed their differences were about policy only.

“Of course I’ve gotten over the 1996 election,” Mr Keating says. “I was disappointed for the country. I don’t hate Howard.

“They went away from the government that would have given them a republic, continued the throw to Asia, and consolidated the economic reforms. They went to a prime minister who basically didn’t believe in the Asian construct, who committed Australia to war in Iraq, who decided not to eschew prejudice, and gave Pauline Hanson some space in the public debate and let racism out and run again. How could anyone say this was the right answer for Australia?”

Reflecting on his 27 years in parliament, Mr Keating does not want honours or praise, but does want acknowledgment. “The only thing I want is to observe the economic and social progress,” he says.

Troy Bramston is the author of Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader (Scribe) published on Monday