Both Liberal and Labor should wise up to the young and the resting

GETTING the balance right is a phrase our Prime Minister likes to use, whether he is talking about industrial relations reforms, climate change policy or the Government's stimulus packages. In fact most politicians use such rhetoric, the key ingredient to achieving electoral success when appealing to centrist swinging voters.

Unfortunately, getting the balance right hasn't extended to the age breakdown of politicians in the parliament. The Coalition is too old, weighed down by an ageing line-up contributing little to its chances of returning to government. Conversely, on the Labor side, there simply aren't enough MPs aged 60 and older, denying the ministry the wisdom to avoid unintended consequences when fashioning policy.

There are 35 MPs over 60 in the federal parliament: 26 on the Coalition side, seven on the Labor side. The remaining two MPs are Australian Greens leader Bob Brown and former Nationals turned independent MP Bob Katter. As a total, 35 MPs over 60 from a parliamentary pool of 226 MPs (15 per cent) is not an over-representation; far from it. Indeed, according to the latest national census, it is marginally less than the percentage of over-60s in the community. The problem is there are too many oldies in the Coalition ranks and not enough in the Government's.

The imbalance of age weighting between the main parties is disturbing, whatever your political stripe. Coalition supporters should be concerned that their side of politics has not renewed after the devastating election defeat in November 2007. Labor supporters should be concerned their party doesn't have enough experienced heads to navigate the nation through the tough economic times ahead.

Let's start with the Opposition. At the first Liberal partyroom meeting of the year, 64-year-old Joanna Gash asked all the MPs over 60 to stand up. She then asked Malcolm Turnbull to pledge his support for the contribution they made, irrespective of their ages. Tongue in cheek, Turnbull said he would be delighted to, noting he was not that far off 60 himself (he is 54).

Gash's comments speak volumes about the divide that has opened inside the parliamentary Liberal Party. The young bucks, as they have been labelled (when they are not being referred to as "big swinging dicks"), strongly believe the Liberal Party needs to renew to win its way back into power. The older MPs take the view the young bucks (almost all of whom are at least in their late 30s) are getting ahead of themselves and should defer to their more senior colleagues.

But most Coalition MPs over 60 are doing little more than holding on to their seats. Only two of the 26 Coalition MPs over 60 are on the front bench. The remaining 24 are doing little more than blocking the entry of a fresh batch of MPs who might help the Coalition win its way back into government.

Some of these should-be-retirees argue that they provide an important mentoring role in the parliament. Perhaps. But unless they are enacting a school-style buddy system, 24 backbenchers over 60 acting as mentors for the 45 remaining Coalition backbenchers is too many mentoring too few. This is especially true given there are only three under-35-year-olds in the Coalition's parliamentary ranks. By the time of the next election a further five Coalition MPs will have hit 60.

When you look at the Labor Party, the key players in their leadership team all entered parliament just before or just after the party lost government in 1996. Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Stephen Smith, Lindsay Tanner and Senate leader Chris Evans entered parliament between 1993 and 1998. While the present crop of youthful Coalition MPs would like to think they can fill this all-important role for their side of politics one day, the reality is they need help.

So the Coalition needs to make room for the nucleus of its next governmental line-up. But the Labor Government has its own problems. Seven MPs over 60 years old out of a parliamentary team of 115 are too few, especially given only two of those seven are in the ministry (Simon Crean and Bob Debus).

Apart from the fact we are an ageing population and a vote-seeking government needs to appeal to an older demographic, more experience on the front bench helps the Government think before it acts. From the bank guarantee to the claims an inflation genie was out of the bottle, the Government has made some ill-thought-through announcements. A more experienced line-up might have acted more cautiously.

Getting the balance right sounds like a trite phrase and no doubt it is when it is being used by our politicians. But it is vital when it comes to the line-ups who represent us. The Coalition is too old and the Labor Party isn't old enough. Go figure.

TWO Mondays ago my colleague Glenn Milne wrote a column on divisions in the Liberal Party, based on an email he had received from a Liberal MP who wished to remain anonymous. The anonymous detractor was critical of a collection of MPs who allegedly had been undermining Julie Bishop in her role as deputy leader. The author of the email apparently went from being a Bishop critic to a fan after a conversion on the road to Damascus while watching her interviewed on the ABC's Insiders program.

I took my "unhealthy obsession" with Bishop to the internet and belatedly watched her performance. She did very well. But political interviews are swings and roundabouts. Her performance on Lateline following the Milne article was woeful and when she appeared on Q&A on Thursday night sitting between P.J. O'Rourke and David Marr she was out of her depth. The topic was economics, with a little border protection thrown in. Her performance served as a reminder of why she lost the shadow treasury portfolio. But she is safe in her position as deputy leader, for now.

Peter van Onselen is a contributing editor to The Australian and associate professor of politics and government at Edith Cowan University in Perth.