Candidates jostle as speculation mounts over whether Rebecca White will recontest leadership
As Labor prepares to meet to decide the party’s leadership team, there is speculation Rebecca White may not nominate for the top job.
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THE leadership of the Labor Party could take weeks to resolve with speculation Rebecca White may not contest it.
A meeting of the state Parliamentary Labor Party is expected to be held soon to discuss who will run as leader and deputy leader.
In the wake of the state election, the leadership positions are open and up for grabs.
Under Labor Party rules, if there is more than one candidate a ballot must be held of rank and file party members and state conference delegates, which would take some weeks.
Ms White has said she was keen to continue as leader, saying she has “unfinished business”.
But it is believed she will stand only if there are no other contenders.
Franklin member David O’Byrne has long had the backing of key unions including the Health and Community Services Union and United Workers Union to run.
But if Mr O’Byrne, from the powerful left faction, does stand it is likely that Braddon MHA Dr Shane Broad, from the right faction, will challenge him.
There are many in the party who praise Ms White for a gutsy election campaign after a rocky start with fighting over the pre-selection of Kingborough mayor Dean Winter and the standing down of Clark candidate Ben McGregor, who is also the party’s president.
One senior party source said if Mr O’Byrne challenged Ms White it could split the party wide open.
“It would be a recipe for disaster for the ALP,” he said.
Another source said Ms White deserved support.
“She stood up to the faceless people in the party and she has respect in the party and the wider community,” she said.
“It is about the future of the party and improving how things are done rather than continuing with the status quo.”
Supporters of Mr O’Byrne are not giving any clues about what he might chose to do.
One left faction member said the party was “still licking its wounds from the election”.
“The election result was hardly a win for Rebecca. I would expect David to stand.”
Another source believes it is time Mr O’Byrne stepped up and accused him of undermining the party’s leadership for 10 years.
“Not once has he had the guts or the balls to challenge so it is this time or never.”
One party source said Ms White would win the rank and file vote and most likely the delegates’ vote if she nominated.
“If she decides not to stand, I can assure you Broad will put his hand up against O’Byrne.”
Dr Broad confirmed he was “considering his options” if Ms White did not stand as leader.
Tough task for Labor to leave political wilderness
PETER Patmore is an articulate political observer and former parliamentarian, but talk about his beloved Labor’s performance at last weekend’s state election and he becomes flustered.
Talk about Labor’s dismal result and his voice becomes agitated, his words race at a gallop. Dr Patmore warned 20 years ago that Labor would struggle to form government if it did not reform its internal ideological structure. He made the prediction in a doctorate thesis in 2000.
“It’s 20 years on and still no one has come to grips with the issues I raised in that thesis,” a frustrated Dr Patmore said. “They are still banging on with this arrogant majority government nonsense, but the fact is it ain’t your choice mate, you’ll deal with what the people decide.”
Dr Patmore was deputy premier, attorney-general, and minister for justice, industrial relations, consumer affairs, education and arts in an 18-year career as a Labor MP that began in 1984.
He has a law degree from the University of Tasmania, a criminology diploma from Cambridge University and a PhD in political science from UTAS.
In his doctorate thesis he explained that Labor’s traditional vote was splintering with the emergence of the political arm of the environmental movement. Educated middle-class voters, whose families had been rusted on to Labor for generations, were drifting to the Greens.
Dr Patmore explained that Labor’s initial response to this was to attack the Greens and rule out governing in minority. This, he warned, would backfire.
Labor had to come to terms with the environmental movement and adapt to the new paradigm.
“Here we are today, nowhere nearer to a solution,” Dr Patmore said.
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Dr Patmore sat in Michael Field’s minority government in 1989, which shared power with the Greens. He says Robin Gray’s Liberals had “cooked the books” the previous term and left the Labor-Green Accord with no money.
“We could barely pay the public service,” Dr Patmore said. “We were buggered.
“There was no way known we were going to win the next election and Fieldy and I thought ‘well, bugger it’. Once we’d accepted the next election was lost, it was seriously liberating.”
He said they worried less about political fallout and more about “doing the right thing”.
Many commentators, including Walkley Award-winning journalist Wayne Crawford, University of Tasmania political analyst Richard Herr and economist Saul Eslake, have over the years commended the Field government for its bold reform agenda.
Dr Patmore was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia in 2005 for services to parliament, specifically for introducing fiscal, education and law reforms.
However, at a street level, Labor and the Liberals have for the past 20 years denigrated the Field legacy and worked in tandem to demonise environmentalists.
This smear campaign has fed a fervent anti-green zeal that is now a thorn in Labor’s side, especially in Bass and Braddon, but also in Lyons.
“Labor’s scared to even mention the environment because they fear the Libs will say they’re in bed with the Greens,” Dr Patmore said. “Labor is gun shy, whereas the Liberals love the majority government chant, they love it, but at a federal level they are in a coalition.”
Dr Patmore says Labor must develop a sensible environmental policy and show leadership in selling it to the public.
“Look, we love salmon farming, but it nearly wrecked Macquarie Harbour,” he said. “It’s got problems. Face it. We’ve got to demonstrate to the public that the proper guidelines are in place so as not to destroy our waterways.”
Dr Patmore said Labor showed leadership with the pokies policy it took to the 2018 election, but that became a burden due to the policy backflip. “It was a disaster,” he said.
Labor stalwart Terry Aulich – MHA for Lyons from 1976 to 1982 and senator from 1984 to 1993 – reckons the damage can be fixed in a term if Labor adopts a broader base of policies.
“You can’t rely on health and education to win you government,” Mr Aulich said. “We need to sell a vision about what the future needs. Why should the Greens own the environment? We should have our own environmental policies. There are significant concerns about fisheries, it has to be looked at properly.”
He said it was a disgrace that beaches in southern Tasmania had to be closed due to sewage spills and that sewerage reform could be part of Labor’s broader new environmental policy. “Why has Hobart got the dirtiest beaches in the country?” Mr Aulich said.
He said Labor should have defended the integrity of national parks, and supported developments on the periphery of protected wilderness as opposed to the Liberals’ highly contentious expressions-of-interest process for projects in national parks.
Former Labor premier David Bartlett said Tasmania was the canary in the coal mine for Labor nationally and agreed the party had to address the issues in Dr Patmore’s thesis.
“But I wouldn’t read too much into this recent election result,” Mr Bartlett said. “Patmore’s theory has been writ large for Tasmania for some time. Yes, Labor needs to find a narrative in which we join sustainable jobs with protecting the Tasmanian way of life.”
Mr Bartlett said debate in Tasmania was divisive. “You’re either 100 per cent for forestry or you’re 100 per cent stinking green,” he said. “There’s too many politicians prepared to exploit that.”
Pete Hay, speech writer for former Labor PM the late Gough Whitlam and former adviser to state Labor MP Michael Aird, said it was conceivable Labor could “come roaring back at the next election”.
“It would need to give people a reason to support them, and to present itself as Liberal-light won’t do it,” Dr Hay said. “It needs to be bold on progressive issues — pokies, for instance, industrial salmon, protest legislation.
“In the short term this might not work. It might mean the party fails to come roaring back next election, but in the longer term this is the only way it can lift itself out of electoral irrelevance. And I suspect the immediate gains might actually be larger than many of us, the party included, would anticipate.”
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