Joe Biden ‘template for progressive centrists’

Senior Labor MPs say Joe Biden’s likely victory in the US presidential race shows centre-left parties must be ‘progressive but centrist’.

Shadow Minister for Agriculture Joel Fitzgibbon said the lesson from the US election was that ‘centre-left ­parties can win if their approach is sufficiently patient, pragmatic and avoids policy prescriptions which create losers’. Picture: AAP

Senior Labor MPs say Joe Biden’s likely victory in the US presidential race shows centre-left parties must be “progressive but centrist”, with Anthony Albanese preparing to use a change in US leader to frame Scott Morrison as a global outlier on climate change action.

Joel Fitzgibbon, Don Farrell, Shayne Neumann, Murray Watt, Kimberley Kitching and Kim Carr told The Australian the key to Mr Biden’s success was winning over blue-collar communities that were lost by Hillary Clinton.

Senator Farrell, the opposition tourism spokesman and Right faction powerbroker, said federal Labor needed to replicate Mr Biden’s success in winning back blue-collar workers who had previously turned their backs on the Democrats.

“Just like Biden got them back in Wisconsin and Michigan, we have got to get these workers back in Queensland and Western Australia,” Senator Farrell said.

Mr Biden posted a tweet on Thursday noting “today the Trump administration officially left the Paris Agreement”, three years after the US President announced he would pull out of the international climate change agreement.

“In exactly 77 days, a Biden ­administration will rejoin it,” Mr Biden said.

The Opposition Leader will use any change in the US presidency to increase pressure on the Morrison government for failing to sign up to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler told party members in August that the election of Mr Biden as US president would be a game-changer in global action on climate change.

“And one of the elements of that platform is the US president will impose carbon tariffs on countries, frankly like Australia, that don’t have adequate climate policies,” he said.

Mr Fitzgibbon, a rival to Mr Butler in the party’s climate debate, said the lesson from the US election was that “centre-left ­parties can win if their approach is sufficiently patient, pragmatic and avoids policy prescriptions which create losers”.

“Anastasia Palaszczuk proved that here recently,” he said.

The opposition resources spokesman said Donald Trump’s better-than-expected performance showed “there are still too many who feel they are victims of elitist and impatient progressivism. There are many of them here in Australia, too.”

Mr Neumann, a Labor frontbencher who holds the regional Queensland electorate of Blair, said the lesson was centre-left ­parties need “progressive but centrist policies”.

“You have got to have a progressive agenda but it has got to be a pragmatic agenda as well that brings in coalitions of people,” Mr Neumann said.

“Centre-left parties can win when they build coalitions. They didn’t have Bernie Sanders at the front did they? They had someone who was secure and safe.”

Senator Watt, a Labor left frontbencher, said the US and Queensland elections showed “social-democratic parties can win when jobs and health are their core agenda”.

“It is vital that centre-left ­parties connect with working ­people and demonstrate they are on their side,” the Queensland senator said.

“Biden and (Annastacia) Palas­zczuk demonstrated that they were clearly on the side of working people and working people got behind them.”

Senator Kitching, from the Victorian Right, said the Dem­ocrats had “tacked to the centre” by choosing Mr Biden as their ­candidate. “This result is a victory for the centrists in the Democratic Party,” Senator Kitching said.

Senator Carr, from the Socialist Left, said the US Democrats had “begun the rebuilding of the coalition of urban progressives and blue-collar communities across ethnic and geographical lines throughout much of the country”.

“Hillary Clinton, and in previous election campaigns the Democrats, had ignored these (working-class) communities and taken for granted these coalitions.

“(Biden) has been able to rebuild those,” Senator Carr said.

“It is about ensuring that you speak with deeper understanding of the economic challenges facing communities under pressure,” he said, “so people understand that you are on their side.”