Labor leadership: ALP short on options

‘Albanese’s leadership of the Labor Party would be different from Shorten’s, but it’s difficult to see how it would be better.’

It was only a matter of time before leadership speculation would begin to swirl around Bill Shorten.

This latest brouhaha is largely driven by the Liberal Party, whose MPs are feeling their oats once again after the budget.

The Prime Minister is back from his “near death” moment and now leads Shorten as preferred PM for the first time in eight months. The polls show Labor’s lead narrowing and the pressure is on Shorten now to do more than oppose the government and actually capture the imagination of swinging voters.

Truth be told, there has been disquiet about Bill Shorten within the Labor Party since the caucus elected him opposition leader back in 2013.

Shorten could only get 40 per cent of support from the general membership of the party. The Labor caucus overwhelmingly endorsed his leadership (63.95% to Albanese’s 36.05%) and under the rules for leadership spills within the Labor, largely created by the outgoing leader, Kevin Rudd, Shorten was elected leader.

These new rules were Rudd’s parting gift to the party. It was originally hailed as a masterstroke but as with many of Rudd’s pushes, it has a shelf life, a use-by date before calamity comes.

The original plan was that a leadership spill could only occur outside a post-election leadership ballot (when it is mandatory) when 75 per cent of the caucus signed a petition calling for a spill. Ultimately, it was settled at 60 per cent. The change to the number is of little significance. What is important is that there is no show of hands but the more incriminating signature on a piece of paper.

Political careers turn on such things and that is why a spill is unlikely, if not downright impossible.

But let’s engage in the hypothetical. And it quickly becomes clear there is little to get excited about a potential Albanese leadership. Many Labor members and supporters see Shorten as a stand-for-nothing, insipid piece of work and while Albanese’s leadership of the Labor Party would be different it is difficult to see how it would be better.

Albo, as he is affectionately known, is a creature from the Left. He’s a decent bloke who has fought his way through the minefield of a Right-faction-dominated Labor in NSW. But decency will only get you so far. An Albo leadership would necessarily cause greater factional strife with him coming from the numerically weaker faction within the caucus. At least Shorten knows how to keep the caucus under control.

While he denies it to this day, it is clear Albo’s representative career began amid denials of the Hawke-Keating economic reforms. He embraces them now but on occasions in his early days he denied them and more than thrice. That would be fuel for any fire and the government’s media folk would be hacking their way through media archives looking for proof of it and I guarantee you it exists.

In effect any leadership duel is a moot point but the discussion of it highlights the fact that Labor’s leadership and frontbench stocks are wafer thin.

Just as in Jack O’Hagan’s 1942 ballad, for Labor things are crook in Tallyrook.

So much talent has been lost as a direct result of the Rudd-Gillard feud that bubbled away and exploded on several occasions during Labor’s six years in power and ultimately cost the party government. The next generation of Labor leaders and senior ministers walked away, broken by Labor’s eerie urge to self-immolate while in full view.

Eleven members of the 21-member cabinet of the first Rudd government, including Rudd and Gillard, have left politics.

Lindsay Tanner, Greg Combet, Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson, Rob McClelland, Stephen Smith and the veteran John Faulkner have all gone. That’s a veritable Who’s Who of Labor MPs with ministerial experience and in the case of Tanner and Combet in particular, leaders in waiting.

One can only speculate on how a Combet or Tanner Labor leadership would be going against an Abbott government now but it would be reasonable to assume either of those two men would be travelling a bit better than Shorten — or Albo, for that matter.

Labor is undergoing what is referred to darkly in the AFL as a rebuild. It’s not just key personnel who needs to be found. It is platform and policy framework as well as the right people to create and sell it. At this point it is worth reminding those who may have forgotten that Labor did not undertake any policy review after its defeat in the 2013 federal election.

That was the time to hose the place out and start from scratch, as ugly as it would have been at the time. In a sense Shorten is a prisoner of that failure to review and renew.

For example, Shorten has been asked about Labor’s position on boat towbacks. He can’t say and indeed he had an unfortunate and embarrassing moment earlier this week where he failed to answer a question on this subject seven times.

Labor simply doesn’t have a position on boat towbacks. Prior to the 2013 election, it denounced them but now, after the Abbott government has been so effective in stopping the boats, Labor has fallen silent. You might think it would be an easy thing for Shorten to announce support of that arm of the refugee policy (it is substantially the only point of differentiation between the Government and the Opposition) but many members of the left-wing faction in the caucus simply won’t have it.

Shorten will go to the next election as Labor leader, save him falling under the number 42 bus. We can be almost as certain that he will face off against Tony Abbott at that time.

But the growing speculation about Shorten’s leadership is a sign that one of Kevin Rudd’s time bombs is set to go off. What it will lack in explosive force, it will more than make up for in paralysing effect with the party incapable of renewal and unable to put itself in some of reasonable shape before the next federal election.