Shorten starts second year scoring high on popularity, low on serious policy reform Chris Kenny Associate Editor (National Affairs) AUSTRALIAN 04,10, 2014 IN just over a week Bill Shorten will celebrate his first anniversary as Opposition Leader. In that period I have not been sufficiently fortunate to secure an interview with him but, if my luck were to change, my central question would be: “What major policies have you revised?” The view of the Australian electorate, as expressed on September 7 last year, was emphatic. Despite a desperate rearguard revival of the once-popular Kevin Rudd, Labor was trounced, losing 17 seats and a couple of sympathetic independents. The ALP primary vote of 33 per cent was its worst showing for 75 years. The Gillard-Rudd government was skewered by a relentless three-pronged attack against its main policy weaknesses — carbon tax, border protection and fiscal mismanagement. There can be no disputing these election issues; the public has them seared into its political consciousness and Labor’s own last-minute rhetorical contortions largely conceded the failings. The only other major factor was Labor’s internal treachery, which flowed largely from its mishandling of those three crucial areas. Yet one year after Shorten took over, Labor has done nothing to overhaul those polices. If an election were held tomorrow, the ALP would be targeted by familiar attacks: that it would levy a carbon tax, trigger chaos on our borders and fail to repair the budget. This is a serious problem for the opposition and a telling critique of Shorten’s leadership. He has been so slow to repudiate Labor’s misdeeds that no matter what policy changes he attempts during the next two years, it may not be enough to stymie a Coalition attack or convince a sceptical public. Besides, there is absolutely no indication that the Shorten opposition is preparing to fix these policy dilemmas. On the contrary, it seems committed to take a carbon price to the next election; is determined to criticise the Coalition’s border protection policies no matter how successful they are; and resistance to budget cuts suggests it will have little alternative but to offer larger deficits, higher taxes or both. The avalanche of books by Labor figures is not helping Shorten. Whether it is Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Bob Carr, Greg Combet or a host of other former MPs and staff bursting on to the page, their natural inclination is to claim a legacy rather than admit errors. So instead of striking out for new ground, Labor is digging in on the ground it lost. Shorten needs to break from his party’s recent trauma but (to borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald) he is fighting against a current of books, interviews and commentary so that he is “borne back ceaselessly” into Labor’s past. Last month Tanya Plibersek tweeted a picture of Swan receiving his “world’s greatest treasurer” award, noting its third anniversary. Given Swan’s record of promising surpluses — even announcing surpluses — but delivering record deficits, he is poison to the opposition’s economic credibility. Yet Swan remains in parliament, defending his legacy, and receiving support from his colleagues. This complicates life for Shorten and his Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen, as we saw last month when Bowen had to dance around suggestions his proposal to shift responsibility for budget forecasting to the Parliamentary Budget Office was a tacit admission that Swan’s interaction with Treasury forecasts had been less than ideal. On budget matters, Labor may have been lured into a false sense of security by the government’s budget bungling. Broken promises, tough measures and poor advocacy have made fiscal repair the Coalition’s greatest area of vulnerability. So the opposition has focused on the attack. Fair enough. But unless it is also prepared to admit is own mistakes in government, concede the need for budget savings and propose some semblance of austerity itself, it is unlikely to win voters’ trust or put itself in the strongest position to benefit from the Coalition’s missteps. On climate policy, Labor is torn between mainstream cost of living pressures and a green-left backlash if it drops carbon pricing. Strangely enough, it was Gillard who had the right formula back in 2010. If you strip away her silly citizens assembly idea, the pledge to work towards a carbon price when community and international consensus prevailed struck a sensible balance. Shorten would do well to adopt a similar stance. Border protection is now the easiest area for Labor to neutralise. It needs to footprint the government’s policies — including boat turn-backs and temporary protection visas — endorsing them for all the obvious reasons of saving lives, preserving our humanitarian quota for those most in need and protecting the integrity of our immigration system. Labor needs only to criticise mistakes or mismanagement, not the policy itself. There has been too much human and political trauma with asylum-seekers during the past 15 years and voters will be wary of seeing our border protection regime rent asunder again. Shorten has been boosted and lured off course by the siren song of good polling in his first year. Because policy failure was the root of Labor’s demise, policy reform must be the key to future success. One of the few significant policy shifts we have seen is regrettable and, I understand, happened against Shorten’s wishes. The move by the NSW conference to commit to recognising a Palestinian state continues Labor’s break — at Carr’s behest — from a bipartisan consensus on Middle East policy. It appears to be a sop to the demographics in Labor electorates in southwestern Sydney. And it is poor policy. What state would Labor recognise: the Fatah-controlled West Bank or the Hamas regime in Gaza? Would it recognise a Palestinian state that denied Israel’s right to exist? Would it offer recognition even while Hamas fired rockets into Israel? What would this say about our opposition to extremism? If Shorten tries to head off this push at the national conference, all power to him. More broadly, in his second year, he must turn his attention to policy reform.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 21:18:30 +0000
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