Shorten is disciplined but test of his mettle is ahead

Albo has done it, Penny has done it, Tanya has done it. On Monday night, in front of a bleeding-heart ABC Q&A audience, senior Left faction figure Tanya Plibersek pledged herself to boat turnbacks and offshore processing. Penny Wong yesterday told The Australian she would vote in favour of Labor’s border protection policies at next week’s ALP national conference. And the Left’s one-time leadership candidate, Anthony Albanese, said the successful turnbacks initiated by the Coalition would continue under a Labor government. Moreover, he said, there would not even be a vote at the party conference on this contentious method of combating people-smugglers. This can’t have been easy for these MPs. At the 2015 conference, Mr Albanese voted against turnbacks and Ms Plibersek and Senator Wong handed their votes to proxies who also gave the practice the thumbs down.

Labor’s medical evacuation stunt last week was a worry because of its potential to embolden a Left hijack of border protection. But credit where it’s due, Labor’s leadership is putting on a display of discipline and unity despite a history of deep division within the party on this life-and-death issue. Bill Shorten, from the Right, has been clear and direct: “We will turn back boats where it is safe to do so. We will still keep offshore processing, full stop.” Ms Plibersek, Senator Wong and Mr Albanese have acknowledged publicly that the party decided the issue in 2015 and that they have fallen in behind the position adopted. They appear to accept that a return to the open borders mayhem of 2008-13 would have our defence force personnel once again retrieving the bodies of drowned asylum-seekers, children included.

Under Mr Shorten the party has shown encouraging signs of having left behind this disastrous policy failure, as well as the leadership turmoil in which he was a pivotal player. Although Mr Albanese has broad support in the party, Mr Shorten outmanoeuvred him after the 2013 and 2016 elections to seize and maintain the leadership. And you don’t have to agree with the party platform to recognise Shorten Labor’s discipline, unity and political skills — it shows up the Coalition’s tendency to fall into amateur-hour chaos.

There is a good reason for Labor to be unified around clear policy. Come next year’s election, voters are entitled to an informed choice. They have to know what they’re getting if Mr Shorten is destined for the Lodge. And an incoming administration has the right — even the duty — to implement policies endorsed by the election result. The principle of the people’s mandate is still important. Our politics is dysfunctional enough without yet another case of a government doing what it said it would not or failing to do what it said it would. With a federal poll five months away, Mr Shorten has nailed his colours to the mast on boat turnbacks and offshore processing.

So far, so good. But if voters like what they see and put him in power next year, will Mr Shorten be able to hold Labor to a border control policy that works? The danger is that the surrender of the Left in opposition turns out to be tactical, that party activists in government will see a new medical evacuation regime as simply the first step towards a more “generous” policy on asylum-seekers. Mr Albanese, Senator Wong and Ms Plibersek are only human; might they and others who in their hearts despise Operation Sovereign Borders convince themselves that this time things will be different, that Labor can succeed with a “compassionate” policy? The language of the Left on asylum-seekers is one of uncompromising moralism. We know from bitter experience how quickly failed border control can unravel, with significant loss of life. The cost of Labor’s failure to defend our borders during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years has been more than $2 billion, just to process unlawful arrivals, and 10,600 of them from that time are still on the government’s books. So, winning power might expose Mr Shorten to a more severe test than he has faced as opposition leader or trade union chief. Will he fight for the national interest or bow to a resurgent Left?

A similar risk of sectional capture arises in industrial relations. A prime minister has to make sure workplaces are flexible enough to deliver productivity, thereby enabling sustainable pay rises and underpinning living standards. But the ACTU has a long wish list of changes — including a destructive right to strike in support of industry-wide bargaining — based on the unpersuasive claim that Labor’s own Fair Work Act is too hard on unions. Structurally Labor has never been more beholden to the unions, and Mr Shorten personally depends for support on the rogue Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union. If he is prime minister, who will come first — the country or the unions?

Another likely challenge for a Shorten administration would be spending restraint, if opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen is to make good on his insistence that Australia needs bigger budget surpluses to ensure against future economic headwinds. But all that is ahead; many voters will not begin seriously to evaluate the opposition and its intentions until early next year.